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(FOUNDED  BY  JOHN  D.  ROCKEFELLBR.) 


THE  FUNCTION  OF   CHRISTIAN 

ETHICS. 


A   THESIS   SUBMITTED   TO   THE   FACULTY   OF  THE  GRADUATE  DIVINITY 

SCHOOL  OF  THE  UNIVERSITY  OF  CHICAGO,  FOR  THE  DEGREE 

OF  DOCTOR  OF  PHILOSOPHY. 


DEPAKTMENT  OF 
SYSTEMATIC  THEOLOGY. 


BY 

ARTHUR  E.  HOLT. 


TTbraT 
^W/VER8ITY 

CHICAGO 
frtiu  of  ^to,  2C.  ifazim  ^  (Eo. 

1904 


CONTENTS. 

Introduction, 

Chapter  I.     Historical  Study  of  the  Function  of  Christian  Ethics 
in  the  New  Testament  Period. 

1.  Ethical  Teachings  of  Jesus. 

2.  Ethical  Teachings  of  St.  Paul. 

Chapter  II.     Study  of  the  Function  of  Christian  Ethics  in  its 
Subsequent   Development. 

1.  The   Function   of    Christian    Ethics    in    the 

Catholic  Development. 

Criticism  of  Catholic  Development. 

2.  The  Protestant  Development. 

The  Work  of  Luther. 
The  Orthodox  Protestant  Development. 
Criticism  of  Orthodox  Protestant  Develop- 
ment. 
The  Work  of  Schleiermacher. 

Chapter  III.     A  Constructive    Statement  of    the    Function    of 
Christian  Ethics. 

Significance   for  Ethics   of  the   Fact  that 

Man  is  called  to  a  Personal  Life. 
Method  in  Christian  Ethics. 
Relation  of  Christian  Ethics  to  History. 

Chapter  IV.  Practical  Value  of  such  a  System  of  Ethics. 

Christian  Ethics  and  Science. 
Value  for  Moral  Life. 
Value  for  Religion. 
Christian  Ethics  as  a  Scientific  Task. 


BIBLIOGRAPHY. 


D.  W.  Herrmann, 

J.  C.  Krarup. 

R.  Kubel. 

J.  Kostlin. 

H.  Schultz. 

Schleiermacher. 

Lobstein. 

Newman  Smyth. 

Harless. 

T.  B.  Strong. 

W.  Gass. 

T.  H.  Green. 

H.  Martensen. 

W.  E.  H.  Lecky. 

F.  Paulsen. 

Wardlaw. 

Wuttke. 

A.  Harnack. 

A.  Harnack. 


Ethik. 

Grundriss  der  Christlichen  Ethik. 

Christliche  Ethik. 

Christliche  Ethik. 

Grundriss  der  Evangelischen  Ethik. 

Christliche  Ethik. 

Introduction  to  Protestant  Dogmatics.  Trans- 
lated by  A.  M.  Smith. 

Christian  Ethics. 

Christian  Ethics. 

Christian  Ethics. 

Geschichte  der  Christlichen  Ethik. 

Prolegomena  to  Ethics. 

Christian  Ethics.     Translated  by   W.  Affleck. 

History  of  European  Morals. 

System  of  Ethics.     Translated  by  Thilly. 

Christian  Ethics. 

Christian  Ethics.     Translated  by  Lacroix. 

What  is  Christianity?  Translated  by  Saunders. 

History  of  Dogma,  Vols.  I-VI.  Translated  by 
Neil  Buchanan. 


or  THE 

UNIVERSITY 


INTRODUCTION. 


The  title  of  this  thesis  is  "The  Function  of  Christian  Ethics."  It 
might  well  have  been  "A  Study  of  the  Norm  in  Christian  Conduct." 
In  general  it  may  be  said  that  the  function  of  Christian  ethics  is  sys- 
tematically to  set  forth  the  contents  of  Christian  conduct.  But  this 
function  must  be  more  accurately  defined ;  stated  in  this  general  way 
it  means  one  thing  for  a  Catholic,  another  thing  for  an  orthodox 
Protestant,  and  another  thing  for  a  New  Testament  writer.  This 
function  differs  as  the  norm  for  Christian  conduct  differs.  If  this 
norm  is  the  divine  church  law  handed  down  by  the  Catholic  Church 
then  the  function  of  Christian  ethics  is  systematically  to  set  forth  the 
content  of  Catholic  ethical  tradition.  If  the  norm  is  the  sacred 
book  of  the  Protestant  then  the  function  is  to  set  forth  the  content 
of  the  biblical  legislation,  and  if  the  norm  is  the  redeemed  personality 
then  the  function  of  Christian  ethics  is  to  set  forth  the  content  of 
Christian  activity  from  the  standpoint  of  this  personality. 

Stated  in  less  technical  language,  the  question  which  this  thesis 
seeks  to  answer  is  one  which  has  been  raised  by  the  rather  recent 
popular  cry  of  "Back  to  Jesus  in  faith  and  conduct."  This  cry, 
which  seemed  fraught  with  so  much  good  for  the  ethical  and  relig- 
ious Hfe  of  the  Christian  church,  has  been  checked  by  a  question 
which  not  many  people  seem  to  have  answered,  namely,  "When  you 
go  back  to  Jesus,  what  can  you  bring  away  with  you"  ?  Some  have 
looked  upon  Jesus  as  a  moral  legislator  whose  precepts  are  good  for 
all  time  and  from  whom  we  may  obtain  directions  governing  all  the 
departments  of  life.  The  hard  and  fast  legalism  in  which  this  an- 
swer has  landed  people  has  checked  the  enthusiasm  of  the  movement. 
It  is  the  purpose  of  this  thesis  to  answer  the  question,  "What  can 
Jesus  give  a  man  in  the  ethical  sphere  ?" 

The  method  of  procedure  will  be  a  study  of  Christian  ethics  in 
its  New  Testament  inception.  We  shall  then  follow  the  change 
which  comes  with  the  development  of  the  Catholic  Church,  the 
Protestant  Reformation  and  the  development  into  orthodox  Protest- 
antism ;  on  the  basis  of  this  study  a  constructive  statement  will  be 
made  of  the  true  conception  of  the  function  of  Christian  ethics. 


CHAPTER  I. 

STUDY    OF    THE    FUNCTION    OF    CHRISTIAN    ETHICS    IN  NEW  TESTA- 
MENT   PERIOD. 

ETHICAL   TEACHING    OF    JESUS. 

Jesus'  ethical  teaching  presupposes  a  reHgious  call :  "Love  your 
enemies  and  pray  for  them  that  persecute  you  that  ye  may  be  sons  of 
your  Father  which  is  in  heaven ;  for  he  maketh  his  son  to  rise  on  the 
evil  and  the  good  and  sendeth  rain  on  the  just  and  the  unjust." 
(Mt.  5-44-45.)  Ethical  action  is  here  wrapped  up  with  the  relig- 
ious vocation  of  being  a  son  to  God.  It  is  from  this  vocation,  in 
other  places  described  as  fellowship  with  Jesus  himself  (John 
15,  24,  14,  20-25,  14,  6:9),  and  as  citizenship  in  the  kingdom  of  God 
(Mt.  6,  33),  that  Jesus  draws  both  a  necessity  and  norm  for  Chris- 
tian activity.  The  vocation  comes  to  man  bringing  an  ethical  prob- 
lem, a  task  to  be  performed ;  the  kingdom  of  heaven  is  something  to 
be  sought  (Mt.  6,  33),  to  be  entered  by  a  narrow  gate  (Luke  13, 
24).  This  vocation  of  sonship  to  God  furnishes  the  norm  for  con- 
duct, "Ye  therefore  shall  be  perfect  as  your  Father  in  heaven  is  per- 
fect." "Love  your  enemies  .  .  .  that  ye  may  be  sons"  (Mt. 
5,  44).  Jesus'  criterion  for  goodness  is  a  condition  of  the  personal 
life.  It  is  to  be  noted  here  that  he  does  not  say  it  is  sufficient  to 
have  a  good  will  towards  men,  the  realization  of  sonship  is  a  richer 
term'  than  the  having  of  a  good  will.  Nor  does  he  content  himself 
with  the  Kantian  formula,  "Love  for  divine  law,"  he  always  speaks 
of  love  for  neighbor.  Personality  is  a  richer  term  than  either  will 
or  law.  To  say  that  Jesus  insists  on  an  inner  righteousness  of  the 
heart  does  not  seem  adequately  to  describe  the  moral  strenuousness 
of  his  message.  It  does  not  do  justice  to  the  positive  consciousness 
of  the  Christian.  To  Jesus  the  good  acts  are  the  acts  of  one  who 
takes  toward  life  the  positive,  purposeful  attitude  which  God  holds. 
An  act  is  good  which  constitutes  man  a  son  of  God.* 

*i.  Jesus  describes  man's  vocation  as  a  call  to  fellowship  with  himself. 
Men  whc  reject  him  reject  God,  and  men  who  enter  into  fellowship  with 
him  enter  into  fellowship  with  God.  These  passages  are  found  largely  in 
the  gospel  of  John  (15,  23;  14,  20-25;  14,  6-8). 

2.  Jesus  also  describes  man's  vocation  as  a  call  to  citizenship  in  the 
kingdom  of  God.  This  can  be  understood  only  in  the  light  of  the  vocation 
as  described  in  the  term  "Sons  of  your  Father."  The  kingdom  of  God  is 
that  organization  where  sons  of  God  exist.  As  Professor  Shailer  Mathews 
has  expressed  it,  the  kingdom  of  God  is  that  "ideal  social  order  in  which  the 
relation  of  men  to  God  is  that  of  sons,  and  therefore  to  each  other  that 
of  brotliers."     cf.  "Social  Teachings  of  Jesus,"  p.  54. 

7 


O  THE    FUNCTION    OF    CHRISTIAN    ETHICS. 

Now  it  is  not  often  pointed  out  that  Jesus'  description  of  the  king- 
dom of  God  is  always  in  terms  of  the  life  of  the  individual  member. 
Instead  of  describing  the  kingdom  as  a  whole  he  defines  the  life  of  a 
man  who  is  called  to  sonship  to  God.  It  is  as  though  he  were  de- 
scribing a  democratic  state  in  terms  of  the  life  of  the  individual 
member.  The  kingdom  of  God  and  of  heaven  is  a  state  where  men 
fulfill  the  vocation  of  sons  of  God.  The  characteristics  of  the  voca- 
tion already  described  are  not  changed  in  this  conception  of  citi- 
zenship in  the  kingdom  of  God.  The  terms  kingdom  of  God  and 
kingdom  of  heaven  do  not,  so  far  as  ethics  is  concerned,  furnish  a 
normative  principle;  they  are  general  concepts  in  the  minds  of  the 
Jewish  people  which  Jesus  reconstructs  on  the  basis  of  the  new 
emphasis  on  the  fatherhood  of  God.  We  might,  I  think,  sum  up 
Jesus'  call  to  men  as  a  call  to  enter  a  kingdom  of  spiritual  person- 
alities, the  condition  of  entrance  being  the  possession  of  spiritual 
life. 

Jesus'  ethical  teachings  are  nothing  more  nor  less  than  the  expli- 
cation of  the  implications  which  this  call  to  sonship  to  God  has  for 
conduct.  Though  the  call  is  primarily  a  religious  one,  yet  there  is 
no  place  where  a  line  can  be  drawn  between  man's  religious  task 
and  his  ethical  one;  his  religious  task  is  an  ethical  one  and  his 
ethical  task  is  a  religious  one.  Man  is  called  to  sonship  to  God,  but 
it  is  to  a  God  who  has  created  the  world;  his  ethical  task  is  to  be 
a  son  in  this  world.  Jesus  never  breaks  the  organic  relationship 
of  conduct  to  personal  faith.  The  norm  for  conduct  is  found  in  the 
character  of  the  Father — not  the  Father  who  stands  hidden  behind 
a  dead  tradition,  but  the  Father  who  is  revealed  in  personal  life. 
Because  God  is  personal  man  is  called  to  be  a  person.  The  ethical 
criterion  becomes  then  the  criterion  of  personal  life.  Jesus'  teach- 
ing comes  to  be  a  valuation  of  life  on  the  basis  of  man's  call  to  be 
a  person.  In  a  multitude  of  ways  Jesus  sets  forth  this  principle, 
valuating  all  the  departments  of  man's  life  on  the  basis  of  it.  Let 
us  consider  his  teaching  on  anger  and  retaliation.  He  criticises 
the  teaching  of  the  Pharisees  who  were  the  leaders  of  this  time. 
They  had  taken  as  normal  for  action  the  words  of  Exodus  (21,  23- 
25)  :  "Thou  shalt  give  life  for  life,  eye  for  eye,  tooth  for  tooth,  hand 
for  hand,  burning  for  burning,  wound  for  wound,  stripe  for  stripe ;" 
also  Leviticus  (19,  17),  "I  am  the  Lord,  thou  shalt  not  hate  thy 
brother  in  thy  heart  ....  nor  bear  any  grudge  against 
the  children  of  thy  people,  but  shall  love  thy  neighbor 
as  thyself."  Jesus  puts  in  place  of  these  teachings  his 
own,  "But  I  say  unto  you.  Resist  not  him  that  is  evil: 
but  whosoever  sm.iteth  thee  on  thy  right  cheek,  turn  to  him 
the  other  also"  (Mt.  5,  39).  "But  I  say  unto  you  love  your  enemies 
and  pray  for  them  that  persecute  you  that  ye  may  be  sons  of  your 


THE    FUNCTION    OF    CHRISTIAN    ETHICS.  9 

Father  which  is  in  heaven"  (Mt.  5,  44).  His  objection  to  actions 
governed  by  the  Old  Testament  code  was  that  such  righteousness 
never  rises  above  the  sphere  of  circumstances,  whereas  the  son  of 
God  must  rise  above  circumstances.  The  man  who  returns  burning 
for  burning  and  wound  for  wound  has  no  consistent  purpose  govern- 
ing his  Ufe;  he  is  governed  entirely  by  the  way  other  men  treat 
him ;  if  they  treat  him  kindly  he  treats  them  kindly,  if  they  are  un- 
kind to  him,  he  is  unkind  to  them.  Such  a  man  is  a  slave  to  circum- 
stances, he  has  no  vocation  but  rather  exists  as  a  means  to  some 
other  man's  vocation.  God  does  not  allow  man's  pettiness  to  deter- 
mine his  attitude  towards  men,  neither  should  a  son  of  God  allow 
the  pettiness  of  other  men  to  determine  his  attitude  toward  them. 
Jesus  is  not  advocating  a  policy  of  weak  passivity  towards  men,  in 
fact  that  is  the  very  thing  which  he  is  condemning.  It  is  not  always 
seen  that  the  man  who  renders  evil  for  evil  is  being  dominated  by 
other  men.  Jesus  says  that  the  only  way  to  be  free  is  to  treat  other 
men  better  than  they  treat  you.  Instead  of  robbing  man's  life  of 
its  dignity  he  is  exalting  it  to  supremacy.  By  this  criterion  of  son- 
ship  to  God  Jesus  maintains  the  autonomous  character  of  all  true 
moral  beings. 

By  this  same  criterion  of  sonship  to  God,  a  God  whose  purpose 
dominates  all  occasions,  Jesus  regulates  the  teaching  of  his  day  in 
regard  to  the  taking  of  oaths.  The  Pharisees  taught  that  a  man 
should  perform  unto  the  Lord  his  oaths.  (Mt.  5,  33)  :  that  a  man 
should  do  that  which  he  had  sworn  to  do.  The  basis  of  this  was 
found  in  Deuteronomy  (23,  21-23)  :  "When  thou  shalt  vow  a  vow 
unto  the  Lord  thy  God,  thou  shalt  not  be  slack  to  pay  it,  for  the  Lord 
thy  God  will  surely  require  it  of  thee  and  it  would  be  sin  unto  thee." 
Jesus  overrules  this  teaching  with  the  words,  "Swear  not  at  all." 
That  he  is  not  condemning  the  mere  taking  of  oaths  as  wrong  may 
be  learned  from  the  fact  that  he  himself  takes  an  oath  when  he 
stands  before  Caiaphas  (Mt.  26,  63).  What  he  condemns  is  the 
spirit  in  man  which  will  make  the  occasion  of  having  taken  an  oath 
the  only  occasion  for  truth  telling.  Men  were  telling  the  truth  be- 
cause they  had  sworn  so  to  do,  their  responsibility  rested  in  the 
external  fact  of  an  oath.  Man,  says  Jesus,  must  be  veracious  with- 
out regard  to  circumstances,  his  speech  must  need  no  guarantee  ex- 
cept the  self-imposed  guarantee  of  a  son  of  God.  He  incorporates 
truth-telling  in  man's  vocation. 

One  could  run  through  all  of  Jesus'  teachings  showing  how  he 
values  life  by  this  criterion,  that  man  has  been  called  to  sonship 
to  a  God  who  is  a  moral  personality  above  all  the  world  and  yet  in 
the  world.  The  Jews  had  appointed  times  for  fasting,  times  when  it 
was  proper  for  men  to  wear  sad  countenances ;  Jesus  asks  why  the 
sons  of  the  bride-chamber  should  fast.     (Mt.  9,  15.)     He  revolu- 


lO  THE    FUNCTION    OF    CHRISTIAN    ETHICS. 

ticnized  the  conception  of  the  Sabbath  by  saying  that  it  was  made 
for  man  and  not  man  for  the  Sabbath,  thus  throwing  upon  man  the 
necessity  of  making  the  Sabbath  valuable.  He  reverses  the  idea  of 
purity  and  ceremonial  cleanliness.  The  Pharisees  taught  that  certain 
external  things  were  defiling ;  Jesus  says  only  that  which  is  a  product 
of  a  bad  heart  is  defiling :  *'not  that  which  entereth  into  the  mouth 
defileth  the  man,  but  that  which  procedeth  out  of  the  mouth."  (Mt. 
15,  II.)  Wealth  is  to  be  used  to  feed  the  poor,  it  is  to  be  the 
means  by  which  love  expresses  itself  rather  than  the  external  occa- 
sion for  self-satisfaction  (Mk.  10,  17-27),  nor  should  the  lack  of  it 
be  the  occasion  for  worry  on  the  part  of  man  (Mt.  6,  19-34).  Per- 
sonal life  is  the  supreme  good  and  all  things  are  worthless  if  man 
has  not  found  this  good.  (Mk.  8,  36.)  Because  Jesus  located 
righteousness  entirely  in  the  personal  Hfe,  and  exalted  the  human  soul 
until  he  made  all  worthiness  to  consist  in  personal  life,  he  could  say 
that  the  kingdom  of  heaven  was  at  hand.  HitTierto  the  kingdom, 
had  been  so  wrapped  up  with  temporal  conditions  that  it  could  not 
be  brought  near,  but  by  making  it  supremely  a  life  of  God  in  the 
heart  of  man  Jesus  was  able  to  make  of  the  kingdom  a  present 
reality. 

To  sum  up  our  conclusions  as  to  the  function*  of  ethics  in  Jesus' 
teaching,  we  can  say  that  ethics  has  for  its  task  the  defining  of  the 
new  life  to  which  man  is  called  by  virtue  of  the  fact  that  he  is  a 
son  of  God.  To  live  this  life  man  must  understand  its  nature,  and 
this  Jesus  enables  him  to  do.  To  accomplish  this  he  works  in  two 
ways :  first,  he  sets  before  men  the  nature  of  their  vocation,  and  sec- 
ond, he  sets  before  them  the  snares  which  may  stand  in  the  way  of 
the  attainment  of  this  vocation.  His  work  is  like  that  of  a  physician 
who  reveals  the  normal  workings  of  a  healthy  human  body  and  the 
conditions  which  mitigate  against  the  normal  workings  of  this  body 
and  who  thus  works  in  the  interests  of  health.  Jesus  does  not  give 
men  precepts  for  action,  but  he  gives  them  a  deep  insight  into  the 
nature  of  a  moral  vocation  and  thus  works  in  the  interests  of  mor- 
ality.* 

*It  is  sometimes  said  that  Jesus  gives  commandments  for  life,  and  that 
there  are  two  commands  especially  which  are  given  to  be  obeyed,  i.  e.,  the 
command  to  observe  the  Lord's  supper  (Lk.  22:19),  and  the  command  against 
divorce  (Mk.  10:4-12).  The  answer  to  the  claim  that  we  have  here  two 
commands  which  are  to  be  obeyed,  as  commands,  is  that  it  destroys  the  whole 
purpose  of  the  Lord's  supper  if  it  is  not  kept  in  the  spirit  of  brotherly  love, 
and  to  observe  it  legalistically  would  be  to  observe  it  unworthily.  May  not 
Jesus'  instructions  against  divorce  be  taken  in  the  spirit  of  the  other  com- 
mands, that  God  alone  is  judge  over  the  validity  of  the  marriage  tie  and  not 
human  inclination? 

Those  words  which  sound  like  strenuous  commands  are  usually  ex- 
hortations to  the  disciples  to  make  clear  to  themselves  the  true  significance 
of  their  actions. 


THE    FUNCTION    OF    CHRISTIAN    ETHICS.  II 

It  is  interesting  to  note  how  closely  Jesus  confines  himself  to 
the  task  of  setting  forth  conduct  in  terms  of  personal  life.  He 
teaches  nothing  of  value  on  science,  he  does  not  even  think  it  worth 
while  to  commit  his  teachings  to  writing ;  he  is  content  to  transform 
the  character  of  a  few  men,  to  breathe  into  their  lives  the  spirit 
of  God  their  Father ;  and  with  this  final  blessing  he  leaves  them  to 
transform  the  world.  He  does  not  even  seem  anxious  that  he  should 
leave  behind  him  a  perfect  system  of  teaching,  he  is  content  to  have 
initiated  a  small  band  of  men  into  their  vocation.  He  does  not  seek 
to  become  a  dictator  over  their  lives,  he  is  always  more  anxious  that 
they  should  understand  for  themselves  the  true  nature  of  righteous- 
ness than  that  they  should  do  this  or  that  particular  thing.* 

ETHICAL    TEACHINGS    OF    ST.    PAUL. 

In  a  study  of  the  ethical  teachings  of  St.  Paul  we  find  the  same 
emphasis  on  the  personal  nature  of  all  righteousness:  "For  ye  are 
all  sons  of  God  through  faith  in  Jesus  Christ"  (Gal.  3,  26),  "so  we 
also  when  we  were  children,  were  held  in  bondage  under  the  rudi- 
ments of  the  world :  but  when  the  fullness  of  time  came,  God  sent 
forth  his  son,  born  of  woman,  born  under  the  law,  that  he  might  re- 
deem them  which  were  under  the  law,  that  we  might  receive  the  adop- 
tion of  sons.  And  because  ye  are  sons,  God  sent  forth  the  spirit 
of  his  Son  into  our  hearts,  crying,  Abba,  Father.  So  that  thou 
are  no  longer  a  bond  servant,  but  a  son :  and  if  a  son  then  an  heir 
through  God."  (Gal.  4,  3-7.)  "So  then,  brethren,  we  are  debtors, 
not  to  the  flesh  to  live  after  the  flesh:  for  if  ye  live  after  the  flesh 
ye  must  die :  but  if  by  the  spirit  ye  mortify  the  deeds  of  the  body,  ye 
shall  live.  For  as  many  as  are  led  by  the  Spirit  of  God  these  are 
sons  of  God.  For  ye  received  not  the  spirit  of  bondage 
again  unto  fear:  but  ye  received  the  spirit  of  adoption 
whereby  we  cry,  Abba,  Father.  The  spirit  himself  beareth 
witness'  with  our  spirit  that  we  are  the  children  of  God, 
and  if  children  then  heirs,  heirs  of  God  and  joint-heirs  with 
Christ :  if  so  be  that  we  suffer  with  him,  that  we  may  also  be  glori- 
fied with  him"  (Rom.  8,  12-17).     These  two  passages  are  significant 

♦There  is  noticeable  in  Jesus'  teaching  a  general  lack  of  interest  in  social 
and  economic  questions,  which  is  significant  as  an  index  of  his  main  interest. 
His  rather  curt  answer  to  a  question  uppermost  in  the  minds  of  the  Jews, 
as  to  whether  it  was  lawful  to  give  tribute  to  Caesar  or  not  (Mt.  22,  21), 
his  seeming  indifference  to  all  political  powers,  and  his  failure  to  specify  in 
any  way  as  to  the  political  or  economic  status  of  the  coming  kingdom,  all 
tend  to 'show  that  as  an  ethical  teacher  he  did  not  consider  that  his  function 
was  to  outline  political  and  economic  programs  for  his  day.  As  Dr.  G.  D. 
Heuve.r  says  in  his  book,  entitled  "The  Teachings  of  Jesus  Concernmg 
Wealth"  (p.  200)  :  "Jesus  sought  to  better  people's  material  condition  by 
making  the  people  themselves  better." 


12  THE    FUNCTION    OF    CHRISTIAN    ETHICS. 

because  in  one,  man's  vocation  as  a  son  of  God  is  emphasized,  and 
in  the  other,  it  is  shown  that  this  vocation  is  an  ethical  one  because 
the  vocation  grows  out  of  the  character  of  God.  To  be  filled  with 
the  spirit  of  God  is  to  be  a  son  of  God,  and  to  be  a  son  of  God  is  to 
dominate  over  the  impulses  of  the  flesh.  Paul  also  defines  the  new  life 
of  a  Christian  as  a  life  of  vital  union  with  Christ  (Gal.  2,  2021)  ; 
Christ  lives  in  him  in  a  close,  personal  union.  This  is  not  a  differ- 
ent statement  from  the  description  given  above,  for  Paul  nowhere 
distinguishes  between  the  spirit  of  God  and  the  spirit  of  Christ. 

All  Christians  joined  together  in  close,  personal  union  constitute 
the  body  of  Christ  (Eph.  4,  12-16,  I  Cor.  12,  12,  6,  12-20)  :  the 
unifying  bond  which  unites  all  these  members  is  the  bond  of  love. 
Any  act  which  is  not  animated  by  love  rends  the  body  of  Christ. 
From  out  of  man's  vocation  Paul  draws  the  principle  for  ethical 
activity.  The  central  principle  for  a  man's  action  must  be  love 
(Rom.  13,  8),  which  principle  Paul,  like  Jesus,  grounds  in  the  na- 
ture of  the  Author  of  his  vocation  (Eph.  4,  31-5,  2)  :  "forgiving 
each  other  even  as  God  also  in  Christ  forgave  you.  Be  ye  there- 
fore imitators  of  God,  as  beloved  children,  and  walk  in  love,  even 
as  Christ  also  loved  you." 

That  is  ethically  bad,  according  to  Paul,  which  robs  a  man  of 
his  vocation.  There  are  two  sources  from  which  temptation  comes ; 
the  first  is  the  temptation  to  subject  one's  self  to  the  law  in  a  legal- 
istic way.  The  essence  of  Paul's  objection  to  the  seeking  right- 
eousness by  following  the  precepts  of  the  law,  is  that  thereby  men 
are  throwing  aside  their  vocation  as  sons  of  a  God  who  through 
Jesus  has  called  them  to  freedom  (Gal.  4,  i-ii)  ;  by  following  the 
precepts  of  the  law  they  enter  into  bondage.  The  great  controver- 
sies which  continued  throughout  Paul's  life  were  with  those  Juda- 
izers  who  sought  to  vitiate  the  ethical  life  of  his  converts  by  mak- 
ing them  put  their  confidence  in  works  of  the  law.  It  was  a  battle 
which  Paul  had  fought  for  himself  (Gal.  2,  19),  and  he  appreciated 
the  absolute  futility  of  it.  The  second  temptation  which  tends  to  rob 
man  of  his  ethical  vocation  is  the  prompting  of  the  flesh  (Gal.  5, 
16-24).  The  flesh  wars  against  the  spirit,  and  it  is  the  business  of 
the  Christian  to  become  so  filled  with  the  spirit  as  to  be  able  to 
dominate  over  the  flesh.  This  spirit,  of  course,  is  the  spirit  of  God 
or  of  Christ.  It  is  to  be  noted  here  that  Paul's  remedy  for  the  temp- 
tation of  the  flesh  is  neither  law  nor  regulations  but  the  spirit  of 
God.  The  man  who  walks  by  the  spirit  fulfills  the  vocation  of  a  son 
of  God,  hence  Paul's  remedy  for  sin  is  that  man  exercising  his  will 
shall  enter  into  this  vocation  to  which  Jesus  has  summoned  him. 

To  sum  up  the  conclusions  from  the  ethical  teachings  of  Paul,  he, 
like  Jesus,  finds  in  the  religious  call  which  man  has  experienced  a 
call  to  ethical  action.     This  has  significance  for  his  personal  life. 


THE    FUNCTION    OF    CHRISTIAN    ETHICS.  I3 

All  of  Paul's  teachings  are  given  in  the  interest  of  making  man 
understand  what  it  means  for  conduct  that  he  has  been  called  a 
son  of  God.  He,  like  Jesus,  sets  forth  the  nature  of  the  life  to 
which  man  has  been  called.  He  seeks  to  give  insight  into  the  nature 
of  that  life  and  to  deepen  its  significance.  He  sets  forth  the  snares 
which  might  prevent  a  man  from  entering  into  his  vocation.  Like 
Jesus  he  confines  himself  closely  to  the  teachings  about  personal  life. 
Through  this  the  teachings  find  an  organic  unity  and  because  of  this 
they  are  of  supreme  worth.  He  professes  in  no  way  to  offer  us 
knowledge  on  the  various  physical  and  social  sciences. 


CHAPTER  II. 

STUDY    OF    FUNCTION    OF    CHRISTIAN    ETHICS    IN    ITS    SUBSEQUENT 
DEVELOPMENT— I.     CATHOLIC  DEVELOPMENT. 

With  the  full  development  of  the  Catholic  church  the  function 
of  Christian  ethics  undergoes  a  distinct  change.  The  forces  which 
lead  to  this  development  are  varied,  but  they  all  seem  to  lead  directly 
to  one  goal — the  erection  of  an  authoritative  institution  in  the  place 
of  Christ,  an  institution  whose  function  it  is  to  make  men  subordinate 
to  itself,  instead  of  freeing  them  from  institutions. 

The  most  important  forces  leading  to  this  result  are  the  emphasis 
on  the  apostolic  tradition  and  the  gradual  growth  of  the  hierarchy. 
This  was  the  effective  way  of  meeting  the  opposition  from  heretical 
sects.  Tertullian's  words  in  his  treatise  ''Against  Heretics"  are 
very  significant  of  the  trend  of  development.  "An  appeal  therefore 
must  not  be  made  to  the  scripture  nor  must  controversy  be  admitted 
on  points  in  which  victory  will  either  be  impossible,  or  uncertain, 
or  not  certain  enough ;  but  even  if  a  discussion  from  the  scriptures 
should  not  turn  out  in  such  a  way  as  to  place  both  sides  on  a  par, 
the  natural  order  of  things  would  require  that  the  point  should  be 
first  proposed  which  is  now  the  only  one  which  we  must  discuss, 
'with  whom  lies  the  very  faith  to  which  the  scriptures  belong,  from 
what  original  giver  and  through  whom,  and  when  and  to  whom  has 
been  handed  down  that  rule  by  which  men  become  Christians/  For 
whenever  it  shall  be  manifest  that  the  true  Christian  rule  and  faith 
shall  be  there  will  likewise  be  the  true  scripture  and  exposition 
thereof  and  all  the  Christian  tradition."* 

The  idea  of  authoritative  apostolic  tradition  determined  the  con- 
dition of  ethics  in  the  Western  Church.  Ethics  became  a  setting 
forth  of  certain  authoritative  laws  which  men  are  to  obey.  The 
Western  Church  claimed  to  be  the  successor  of  the  Roman  Empire, 
the  natural  result  was  that  it  was  looked  upon  as  the  law  giver; 
men  were  the  subjects  of  this  hierarchy,  as  they  were  formerly  the 
subjects  of  the  Roman  Empire. 

(Tertullian  Against  Heresies  Ch.  XIX,  Ch.  XIII  and  Ch.  XXI.  Cf.  also 
Cyprian  Unity  of  the  Church,  paragraph  4.)* 

*The  Eastern  Church  because  of  its  speculative  interests  neglected  the 
practical  side  of  life  and  ethics  played  very  small  part  in  its  development. 
It  was  reserved  for  the  practical  Western  Church  to  lay  the  interest  on 
conduct. 


THE    FUNCTION    OF    CHRISTIAN    ETHICS.  1 5 

With  Augustine  there  is  a  double  development  which  partially 
leads  back  to  the  New  Testament  idea  of  righteousness  and  partially 
furthers  the  Catholic  development.  Augustine  as  no  man  previous 
to  him,  insisted  that  obedience  to  external  tradition  and  custom  was 
not  righteousness ;  "but  when  God  commands  anything,  contrary  to 
the  customs  or  compacts  of  a  nation,  though  it  was  never  done  before 
by  them,  it  is  to  be  done."  (Confessions,  Book  III,  Chapter  VII, 
15.)* 

This  quotation  from  Augustine  shows  the  vital  conception  which 
he  had  of  righteousness.  It  was  something  which  transcended  all 
tradition  and  custom,  and  if  carried  out  to  its  logical  conclusion 
would  have  transformed  the  Catholic  conception  of  ethics.  But 
along  with  this,  Augustine  held  a  doctrine  of  grace  which  identified 
the  grace  of  Christ  with  the  institutions  of  the  empirical  church,  and 
he  also  identified  the  church  with  the  kingdom  of  God.  The  idea 
had  been  developed  in  the  Donatist  controversy  which  made  the 
priesthood  a  sacred  office  without  reference  to  the  character  of  the 
priest.  The  church  for  Augustine  is  the  sacred  authoritative  insti- 
tution which  bears  to  man  a  commandment  for  conduct  and  grace 
for  his  weakness.  This  is  the  only  method  of  salvation.  (Ep. 
173:6.)  It  brings  an  authoritative  doctrine.  In  fact  Augustine 
raises  the  Catholic  Church  into  a  divine  institution  which  can  give 
laws  to  men  in  place  of  Christ. 

This  idea  grows  still  more  firmly  established  in  the  following 
years,  and  with  Thomas  Aquinas  it  is  a  central  doctrine ;  more  than 
Augustine,  he  emphasizes  the  authority  of  the  church  in  matters  of 
faith  and  practice.  The  development  is  entirely  along  lines  of 
jurisprudence;  the  church  is  the  great  law-giving  institution.  (Cf. 
Aquinas,  Summa  III.  qu  8;  Summa  qu  ii.  Art.  2.)  This  conception 
of  the  church  as  a  divine  institution  with  powers  to  give  law  is  final 
for  the  Catholic  development.     It  has  been  still  further  accentuated 


*i.  "Many  a  deed  then  which  in  sight  of  men  is  disapproved  is  ap- 
proved by  thy  testimony  and  many  a  one  which  is  praised  by  men  is,  thou 
being  witness,  condemned." 

2.  "Although  in  this  life  the  only  virtue  is  to  love  what  ought  to  be 
loved.  But  what  should  we  choose  chiefly  to  love  except  that  than  which  we 
can  find  nothing  better?  This  is  God  and  if  we  prefer  anything  or  esteem 
anything  equal  to  him  we  fail  to  love  ourselves.  For  it  is  the  better  for  us 
the  more  we  enter  into  him,  than  whom  there  is  nothing  better.  But  we  move 
not  by  walking  but  by  loving,  we  may  not  go  to  him  afoot,  but  with  our 
character.  But  our  character  is  wont  to  be  judged,  not  from  what  any  one 
knows  but  from  what  he  loves.  Nothing  makes  a  character  good  or  bad  but 
good  or  bad  affections."    Augustine  Ep.  155,  Chap.  12,  13. 


1 6  THE    FUNCTION    OF    CHRISTIAN    ETHICS. 

by  the  doctrine  of  an  infallible  pope.*  The  following  quotation  from 
a  comparatively  modem  Catholic  ethical  writer  indicates  the  result  of 
this  development  on  the  function  of  ethics  in  the  Catholic  Church. 
After  discussing  the  power  of  temporal  authorities  to  give  laws  he 
says :  "Certum  est  adesse  in  ecclesia  potestatem  ferendi  leges,  immedi- 
ate a  Christo  Domino  Ecclesiae  Institutore  Communicatem.  Unde  ( i ) 
Hanc  potestatem  certissima  habet  Summus  Pontifex,  tanquam  caput 
universal,  Christo  Vicarius  successor  sancti  Petri,  cui  totem  Ecclesiae 
regimen  a  Christo  ficit  commissum,  independenter  a  conciliis." 

2.  "Concilia  generalia  etiam  possunt  ferre  leges,  pro  tota  ecclesia, 
modo  sint  congregata  de  licentia  Summi  Pontificiis,  et  pro  loco  ac 
tempore  ab  ipso  assignatio."  (De  Ligiores,  Compendium  Theolo- 
giae  Morale,  p.  36.)  Christian  ethics  thus  becomes  a  setting  forth 
of  the  revealed  will  of  God  as  embodied  in  the  traditional  laws  hand- 
ed down  by  the  church.  (Cf.  Gury  Ethics.  Proemium.  Decree  of 
Council  July  8,  1870.)* 

CRITICISM    OF    CATHOLIC    DEVELOPMENT. 

The  erection  between  God  and  man  of  an  infallible  church  which 
is  vicarious  for  God  and  to  which  man  must  submit  his  will,  must 
necessarily  change  the  function  of  Christian  ethics.  It  had  been  the 
purpose  of  Jesus  so  to  value  all  earthly  institutions  that  a  man 
should  not  look  on  any  of  them  as  having  authoritative  power  over 
his  life.  The  Pharisees  came  with  a  sacred  tradition  for  which  they 
claimed  divine  authority.  Jesus  tells  them  that  only  God  has  author- 
ity over  the  soul.  The  Catholic  development  is  practically  a  return 
in  principle  to  the  very  system  which  Jesus  opposed.  The  function 
of  ethics  in  the  Catholic  Church  can  only  be  the  setting  forth  of  the 
content  of  an  inherited  tradition.  Tradition  (not  personal  life)  has 
become  organic.     Man  is  called  primarily  to  be  a  son  of  the  church 


*I.  "Ac  primo  quidem  theologicae  est,  non  solum  de  iis  disputare 
divinae  revelationis  mysteriis,  quae  fidei  dogmata  apellantur,  sed  etiam  ad  ea 
omnia  se  porrigere,  quae  ad  hominum  mores  rite  effigendos  a  Deo  revelata 
etiam  integro  revelationis  deposito  Ecclesiae  magisteris  concredita  sunt; 
Verum  cum  humani  mores  non  solum  juxta  rectae  rationis  leges,  sed  etiam 
juxta  revelatae  voluntatis  Dei  norman  exigendi  sint,  ut  per  supernaturalium 
virtutum  actus  ad  supernaturalem  vitam  et  beatitatem  dirigantur,  manifestum 
est,  prima  nostrae  scientiae  elementa  non  aliunde,  quam  ex  fidii  dogmatibus 
esse  accipienda.  Serviat  igitur  huic  nostrae  disciplinae  humana  ratio,  fides 
vero  et  judicium  magisteriumque  ecclesiae  praeeat  in  omni  nostra  disputa- 
tione  necesse  est."     Gury:  Proemium. 

*2.  "In  the  difficult  course  of  events  Catholic  believers  if  they  will  give 
heed  to  us  as  they  are  bound  to  do  will  see  what  are  the  duties  of  each,  as 
much  in  the  opinions  which  they  ought  to  hold  as  in  the  thing  which  they 

ought  to  do Especially  and  particularly  in  what  is  called  modern 

liberty,  they  must  abide  by  the  judgment  of  the  Apostolic  See."  Leo  XIII. 
Appendix  VII. 


THE    FUNCTION    OF    CHRISTIAN    ETHICS.  I7 

and  Catholic  ethics  sets  forth  this  calling.  Catholic  ethics  seeks  to 
give  insight  not  into  the  nature  of  personal  life,  but  into  tradition. 
It  leaves  the  nature  of  the  personal  life  entirely  in  mystery.  The 
reason  for  an  act  rests  entirely  outside  of  the  person.  It  cannot 
be  interested  in  ethical  personalities  because  it  is  too  much  inter- 
ested in  the  Catholic  Church  as  an  institution.  It  does  not  see  that 
an  ethical  personality  must  transcend  all  institutions,  and  when  it 
has  transcended  all  institutions  it  will  have  transcended  the  Catholic 
Church.  It  is  the  very  greatness  of  Jesus  that  he  in  no  way  ties 
his  followers  down  to  any  stage  of  culture ;  he  holds  them  with  an 
eternal  grip  and  yet  he  bestows  upon  them  the  possibility  of  an 
eternal  development.  Jesus  would  further  morality  by  working  in 
the  interests  of  free  personalities ;  the  function  of  his  teachings  is  to 
endow  his  disciples  with  the  right  method  of  life.  The  Catholic 
Church  works  in  the  interest  of  right  action  without  reference  to 
the  agent ;  it's  plan  of  s-ilvation  is  arranged  with  reference  to  a  mass 
of  fixed  results  rather  than  with  reference  to  a  living  person. 

The  Catholic  Church  assumes  the  right  of  dictatorship,  and  dic- 
tatorship on  the  part  of  any  human  person  or  earthly  institution  is 
absolutely  inconsistent  with  the  claim  at  the  same  time  to  be  work- 
ing in  the  interest  of  moral  personalities.  Its  end  denies  its  meth- 
od. The  criticism  to  be  made  on  casuistry  is  that  its  method  denies 
its  end.  As  an  ethical  teacher  the  casuist  is  supposed  to  be  interested 
in  righteous  characters,  and  yet  his  presupposition  is  that  righteous- 
ness is  ultimately  lodged,  not  in  personality,  but  in  tradition.  It 
should  be  its  aim  to  save  men  from  institutionalism,  and  yet  its  as- 
sumption is  that  divinity  is  lodged  only  in  institutions. 

Harnack  in  his  "History  of  Dogma"  discussed  this  sentence  of 
Sohm :  "The  foundation  of  CathoHcism  is  the  divine  church  law  to 
which  it  lays  claim."  Sohm  declares  that  a  church  law  to  which 
a  man  must  declare  obedience  is  inconsistent  with  the  essence  of  the 
gospel.  Harnack  declares  this  an  "Ana-baptist  proposition."  I  am 
inclined  to  think  that  Harnack  is  right  in  declaring  that  a  church  or 
any  organization  cannot  get  along  without  laws  and  regulations,  but 
Sohm  is  right  in  declaring  that  for  a  church  to  claim  to  be  the 
mediator  of  a  "divine  church  law"  is  inconsistent  with  the  gospel. 
A  church  faith  will  develop  into  a  creed,  its  government  will  develop 
into  an  institution ;  all  this  is  inevitable,  but  the  church  which  is 
content  to  give  to  man  habits  and  institutions,  instead  of  taking 
every  man  to  the  fountain  head  from  which  it  came,  to  Christ  him- 
self, thus  making  him  a  son  of  God  rather  than  a  child  of  the  church, 
can  have  but  one  end,  and  that  is  the  ultimate  destruction  of  the  inner 
life  and  freedom  of  the  individual  member.  Every  organization 
when  it  has  done  its  perfect  work  will  leave  a  man  free  even  from 


l8  THH    FUNCTION    OF    CHRISTIAN    ETHICS. 

the  organization  itself,  except  in  his  gratitude  towards  it  for  its 
service. 

When  the  CathoHc  Church  makes  the  traditional  laws  of  the 
church  normative  for  man's  actions  it  prepares  the  way  for  its  system 
of  indulgences  and  penances.  So  long  as  the  criterion  for  ethical 
action  is  lodged  in  the  personal  life,  the  source  of  ethical  motive  will 
be  found  in  that  life;  men  will  find  the  sanction  for  an  action  in 
their  own  desire  for  life ;  they  will  identify  their  own  life  with  the 
doing  of  the  act.  But  the  case  is  different  when  the  ethical  action 
is  one  traditionally  proscribed.  An  externally  prescribed  act  of 
this  kind  demands  an  external  sanction,  which  must  be  provided  by 
the  church,  hence  the  necessity  of  a  graded  system  of  rewards  and 
punishments. 

A  justification  for  the  Catholic  system  has  sometimes  been  made 
on  the  ground  that  many  people  are  unfit  to  legislate  for  themselves : 
they  are  children  and  belong  under  the  law.  The  answer  to  be 
made  to  this  is,  that  what  they  need  must  not  be  called  Christian 
ethics.  Christian  ethics  has  for  its  function  the  creating  of  spiritual 
personalities.  There  is  a  demand  for  a  Judaistic  ethics,  not  a 
Christian  ethics. 

2.       PROTESTANT    DEVELOPMENT WORDS    OF    LUTHPIR. 

The  Protestant  Reformation  is  an  effort  to  lead  men  back  of  the 
forms  and  ceremonies  of  the  Catholic  Church  to  the  living  personality 
behind  them  all  and  thus  to  re-establish  the  claims  of  Christianity 
to  be  a  religion  of  personal  beings.  Luther's  work  is  nothing  else 
than  a  penetrating  through  the  accretions  which  for  ages  had  accu- 
mulated about  the  true  faith,  and  the  re-establishing  of  the  Christian 
religion  as  a  spiritual  religion.  The  Catholic  Church  was  the  prod- 
uct of  a  long  development,  which  perhaps  had  been  to  a  certain  ex- 
tent justifiable.  The  political  framework  of  society  had  crumbled 
and  the  church  had  supplied  the  lack  with  terrible  results  to  herself. 
Men  had  become  lost  in  the  maze  of  religious  ceremonies  and  as  a 
result  there  was  little  peace  for  the  tender  conscience  inside  the  walls 
of  the  church.  Luther  fought  out  the  battle  for  himself  in  his  cell 
at  the  monastery  and  solved  the  problem  by  once  more  affirming 
that  man  is  justified  by  faith  and  not  by  works.  As  Harnack  says, 
^'Living  faith  in  the  God  who  in  Christ  addresses  to  the  poor  soul 
the  words,  'I  am  thv  salvation,'  the  firm  assurance  that  God  is  the 
being  on  whom  one  can  place  reliance,  that  was  the  message  of 
Luther  to  Christendom."  Luther's  work  was  to  find  a  deeper  unity 
back  of  the  multiplicity  of  Catholicism.  The  Catholic  Church  had 
paganized  religion — every  effort  which  puts  things  as  central  in 
religion  paganizes  it.  It  was  Luther's  work  to  lead  men  back  to 
their  Father.     It  all   resulted  in  a  simplification   of   religion.     As 


THE    FUNCTION    OF    CHRISTIAN    ETHICS.  I9 

Hamack  says,  'That,  however,  which  he  had  experienced  and  which, 
with  ever  increasing  clearness  he  now  learned  to  state,  was  in  com- 
parison with  the  manifold  things  which  his  church  offered  in  religion 
above  everything  else  an  immense  reduction,  an  emancipating  simpli- 
fication .  .  .  that  reduction  meant  nothing  else  than  the  restora- 
tion of  religion,  seeking  God  and  finding  God."  (Hamack,  Vol. 
yill,  p.  183.)  To  quote  from  the  "Larger  Catechism,"  II.  3: 
'Neque  umquam  propriis  viribus,  pervenire  possemus,  ut  patris 
favorem  per  Jesum  Christum  dominum  nostrum,  qui  paterni  animi 
erga  nos  speculum  est,  extra  quem  nihil  nisi  iratum  et  truculentum 
videmus  judicem." 

If  the  central  fact  in  all  life  is  the  personal  God  revealed  in 
Jesus  then  the  central  fact  in  man's  life  must  be  a  personal  will 
which  wills  the  good.  Man  is  justified  by  faith,  which  is  the 
correlate  on  man's  part  of  a  personal  God  who  has  revealed  himself. 
The  Church,  according  to  Luther's  conception,  becomes  a  company 
of  believers  bound  together  by  nothing  except  a  common  faith.  The 
Church  loses  its  function  as  dictator  and  takes  its  place  as  a  servant 
of  society.  All  the  departments  of  life  which  have  been  under  the 
external  control  of  the  Church,  such  as  civic  life  and  marriage,  are 
now  set  free  and  are  held  under  control  only  by  their  worth  for 
men.  The  Church  has  taken  upon  itself  to  train  men  duly  to  appre- 
ciate the  value  of  life  and  thus  it  maintains  a  control  over  society 
from  the  inside.  This  is  a  distinct  return  to  the  New  Testament 
conception  of  the  Church.  The  Church  exists  solely  for  the  purpose 
of  training  spiritual  personalities.  Christian  ethics  then,  as  in  the 
New  Testament,  must  work  in  the  interests  of  these  personalities. 
Goodness  again  becomes  a  personal  thing.  Ethics  ceases  to  expound 
laws.  This  is  not  the  supreme  need  of  the  Christian:  ''Habito 
Christo  facile  condemns  leges  et  omnia  recte  judicabimus.  Imo 
novos  decalogos  faciemus,  sicut  Paulus  facit  per  omnes  epistolas, 
et  Petrus,  maxime  Christus  in  evangelio.  Et  hi  decalogi  clariores 
sunt  quam  Mosi  decalogus,  sicut  facies  Christi  clarior  est  quam 
facies  Mosis."  (Quoted  from  Luther  by  Herrmann,  "Ethik,"  p. 
139.)  Luther  grasps  the^eal  need  of  the  ethical  man  when  he 
writes  his  treatise  "Concerning  Christian  Liberty,"  which  is  one  of 
the  great  ethical  treatises  of  the  Christian  Church.  In  it  he  shows 
how  the  man  redeemed  by  Christ  is  free  in  his  moral  life  and  yet  is 
under  obligations  to  all.  It  is  an  effort  to  aid  man  in  the  under- 
standing of  his  moral  vocation.  Nothing  could  be  read  by  any  man 
which  would  be  more  stimulating  to  true  moral  action.  Luther's 
treatise  on  the  "Ten  Commandments"  is  along  the  same  line. 
Throughout  it  all  there  is  an  effort  to  unify  the  moral  life  by  relat- 
ing the  different  activities  to  the  one  principle  of  love. 

If  one  grasps  clearly  the  Reformation  conception  of  the  Church 


30  THE    FUNCTION    OF    CHRISTIAN    ETHICS. 

he  is  led  immediately  to  the  true  conception  of  Christian  ethics. 
The  Church  has  discarded  its  function  as  a  dictator  over  society. 
If  it  is  to  be  powerful,  it  must  be  because  it  creates  in  the  world 
men  who  rightly  value  the  issues  of  life.  Whatever  of  order  it 
produces  in  society,  it  produces  by  the  creating  of  order  loving  per- 
sonalities. Christian  ethics  has  as  its  function  to  further  the  work 
of  the  Church.  This  it  can  do  by  all  the  means  which  help  man  in 
the  understanding  of  his  moral  problems. 

ORTHODOX    PROTESTANT    DEVELOPMEN. 

The  Reformers  did  not  long  maintain  their  attempt  to  rest  their 
protest  against  the  Catholic  Church  on  the  appeal  of  Christ  to  the 
human  heart.  In  the  place  of  an  infallible  church  they  soon  place 
an  infallible  book.  The  movement  begins  with  Luther,  and  yet  with 
him  it  is  not  carried  out  in  the  legalistic  way  of  later  reformers.  In 
his  teaching  he  never  ceases  to  make  the  person  of  Christ  organic. 
But  Calvin*  and  the  later  theologians  exhibit  the  tendency  to  make 
the  Bible  organic  for  religious  and  moral  teaching  rather  than  the 
redeemed  personalities  of  which  the  Bible  tells.  All  this  has  sig- 
nificance because  it  brings  about  a  change  in  the  function  of  ethics. 
With  the  erection  of  a  book  between  God  and  man  the  words  of 
which  have  value  in  themselves,  ethics  again  becomes  interested 
primarily  in  the  content  of  tradition.  The  Church  again  takes  up 
the  work  of  dictatorship,  only  now  it  is  not  the  dictatorship  of  hier- 
archy but  of  a  book. 

The  Protestant  Church  agreed  that  to  submit  to  the  dictates  of 
an  institution  like  the  Church  was  legalistic,  but  it  did  not  see  that 
to  submit  to  the  laws  of  a  divine  book  in  the  place  of  the  laws  of  a 
council  or  a  pope  did  not  differ  in  principle.  The  following  quota- 
tion from  Wardlaw's  "Christian  Ethics"  (p.  155)  is  substantially 
the  same  in  principle  as  that  of  the  Catholic  authority  before  quoted. 
"That  man  was  originally  in  full  possession  of  the  knowledge  of  the 
divine  will  as  the  rule  or  law  of  duty,  and  that  a  disposition  in 
accordance  with  this  will  was  (if  I  may  so  express  myself)  inwoven 
with  the  very  texture  of  his  moral  constitution,  that  in  this  his 
original  state,  the  dictates  of  conscience  might  with  unhesitating 
assurance  have  been  taken  as  the  test  and  standard  of  moral  recti- 
tude, that  since  by  throwing  off  his  allegiance  man  became  a  sinful 
creature,  the  knowledge  of  his  Master's  will  has  not  been  entirely 
obliterated,  but  in  consequence  of  the  obliteration  of  the  disposition 
to  do  it,  has  become  so  sadly  defaced  and  confused  in  its  character 


♦Calvin  "Institues,"  Bk   II,  Ch.  8,  Sec.  19. 


THE    FUNCTION    OF    CHRISTIAN    ETHICS.  21 

and  impression  that  although  it  still  leaves  him  as  a  subject  for 
moral  government,  intelligent  and  accountable,  it  has  been  rendered 
as  a  standard  or  right  and  wrong  incompetent  and  unsatisfactory, 
itself  requiring  to  be  rectified,  that  the  holy  scripture  coming  from 
the  same  Being  who  was  the  Author  at  first  of  man's  moral  nature, 
are  with  respect  to  the  rule  of  duty  in  precise  harmony  with  the 
dictates  of  conscience  in  that  nature  in  the  state  of  primitive  inno- 
cence, the  law  in  the  book  being  the  same  as  the  law  in  the  heart, 
and  that  the  way  to  bring  mankind  back  to  the  knowledge  of  the  orig- 
inal law  and  to  correct  the  dictates  of  a  depraved  and  erring  con- 
science is  to  put  them  in  possession  of  the  divine  document."  This 
statement,  though  coming  from  an  author  no  longer  looked  upon  as 
an  authority,  is  to  be  commended  for  its  consistency.  Man,  by  his 
fall,  lost  knowledge  of  the  divine  will;  Christian  ethics  has  for  its 
function  the  restoring  of  this  lost  knowledge;  since  the  difficulty  is 
largely  a  matter  of  the  head,  by  placing  in  man's  hand  a  divine  book, 
there  is  guaranteed  to  the  man  an  infallible  action.  What  Wardlaw 
says  with  perfect  frankness  a  great  many  other  Protestant  ethical 
writers  mean,  though  they  have  not  his  gift  of  clear  statement.  The 
following  words  from  Hodge's  "Systematic  Theology"  (Vol.  Ill,  p. 
270),  are  from  the  same  point  of  view :  "The  perfection  of  the  moral 
law  as  revealed  in  the  scriptures  includes  the  points  already  consid- 
ered (i)  that  everything  that  the  Bible  pronounces  to  be  wrong  is 
wrong;  that  everything  which  it  declares  to  be  right  is  right;  (2) 
that  nothing  is  sinful  which  the  Bible  does  not  condemn,  and  nothing 
is  obligatory  on  the  conscience  which  it  does  not  enjoin;  (3)  that 
the  scriptures  are  a  complete  rule  of  duty,  not  only  in  the  sense  just 
stated,  but  also  in  the  sense  that  there  is  and  can  be  no  higher 
standard  of  moral  excellence."  Under  the  heading,  "How  Far  May 
the  Laws  in  the  Bible  be  Dispensed  With?"  he  says  that  "(i)  None 
but  God  can  free  from  the  obligation  of  any  divine  law  which  he 
has  imposed  upon  them.  (2)  With  regard  to  the  positive  laws  of 
the  Old  Testament  and  such  judicial  statements  as  were  designed  ex- 
clusively for  the  Hebrews  living  under  the  theocracy  they  were  all 
abolished  by  the  introduction  of  the  new  dispensation.  We  are  no 
longer  under  obligations  to  circumcise  our  children,  to  keep  the 
Passover,  or  Feast  of  the  Tabernacles,  or  to  go  up  three  times  in  the 
year  to  Jerusalem,  or  to  exact  an  eye  for  an  eye  or  a  tooth  for  a 
tooth.  (3)  With  regard  to  those  laws  founded  on  the  permanent 
relations  of  men  such  as  the  laws  of  property,  of  marriage,  and  of 
obedience  to  parents,  they  can  be  set  aside  by  the  authority  of  God." 
Outside  of  this  sphere  Hodge  recognizes  a  sphere  for  the  exercise 
of  "Christian  liberty  in  matters  of  indifference."  I  have  stated 
Hodge's  position  thus  fully  because  he  has  given  what  is  the  popular 


22  THE    FUNCTION    OF    CHRISTIAN    ETHICS. 

view  on  the  matter,  an  opinion  spread  through  the  agency  of  the  or- 
thodox scripture  doctrine.* 

To  satisfy  the  demand  for  something  fundamental  in  ethical  ac- 
tivity orthodox  Protestantism  has  offered  to  men  a  book.  This  book 
is  vicarious  for  Christ.  It  is  the  mediator  between  Jesus  and  man 
and  the  ipse  dixit  of  this  book  is  fundamental  enough  for  any  one 
who  seeks  to  ground  his  ethical  activity  on  eternal  reality. 

CRITICISM    OF    ORTHODOX    PROTESTANT    DEVELOPMENT. 

The  first  criticism  to  be  made  upon  the  orthodox  principle  of 
ethical  action  is  that  it  fails  to  make  a  vital  organic  unity  between 
the  faith  life  of  the  redeemed  man  and  his  ethical  activity.  It  has 
ether  adopted  Greek  virtues  or  it  has  thrust  a  man  back  into  Juda- 
istic  laws,  neither  of  which  gives  freedom  to  a  man  in  his  ethical 
action.  To  make  the  Old  Testament  or  the  New  Testament  the 
source  of  the  content  of  Christian  conduct  makes  the  conduct  an 
external  thing.  It  does  not  draw  its  motive  power  from  the  new 
life  itself.  It  demands  an  external  sanction  of  rewards  and  punish- 
ments, and  just  because  Protestantism  has  never  seriously  under- 
taken to  furnish  these  rewards  and  punishments,  it  has  often  been 
weaker  than  Catholicism  in  its  ethical  teaching. 

The  second  criticism  to  be  made  is  that  Protestant  ethics  has 
never  been  able  to  find  a  unity  in  its  ethical  activity.  Protestants 
have  never  been  willing  to  affirm  that  all  the  Old  Testament  precepts 
were  valid,  but  they  have  never  been  able  to  draw  a  clear  distinction 


*Wuttke  in  his  "Christian  Ethics"  (Vol.  II,  p.  128)  discusses  what  he 
calls  "the  sphere  of  the  allowed,"  i.  e.,  a  sphere  outside  of  those  duties  ex- 
pressly commanded  in  the  law  of  the  Ten  Commandments.  He  says,  "The 
sphere  of  the  allowed  stands  in  the  same  relation  to  that  of  the  express  law 
as  play  stands  to  earnest  activity.  Play  also  is  an  element  essential  to  the 
full  development  of  moral  life.  With  the  child  play  is  of  high  moral  sig- 
nificancy,  as  it  is  thereby  that  it  learns  to  comprehend,  to  exercise,  and  to 
enjoy  its  full  personal  freedom.  In  learning  and  working  the  child  is  also 
free,  but  however  good  and  zealous  of  work  it  may  be,  it  is  nevertheless 
conscious  at  the  same  of  being  controlled  by  an  objective  law  to  which  it 
must  adapt  itself;  the  other  and  equally  legitimate  phase  of  its  life,  that  of 
personal  freedom  and  self-determination,  is  revealed  to  it  in  its  purest  form 
only  in  play:  and  the  child,  even  the  morally  good  one,  finds  so  great  a 
delight  in  play  for  the  simple  reason  that  it  thereby  comes  to  the  enjoyment 
of  its  full  personal  freedom,  and  the  essence  of  its  enjoyment  lies  in  the 
simple  fact  ttiat  in  its  playful  activity  and  feats  it  is  free  lord  of  its  own  voli- 
tion and  movements."  This  statement  seems  to  make  explicit  some  principles 
which  are  often  implied  but  not  expressed,  (i)  Full  personal  freedom  exists 
in  the  activity  in  which  man  is  not  morally  serious.  There  is  created  a 
dualism  between  man's  moral  nature  and  his  freedom.  (2)  To  make  any 
sphere  of  life  indifferent  and  to  identify  that  sphere  with  the  one  in  which 
man  exercises  his  own  moral  consciousness  certainly  does  not  confer  any 
great  dignity  on  the  moral  consciousness. 


THE    FUNCTION    OF    CHRISTIAN    ETHICS.  23 

between  those  which  are  valid  and  those  which  are  not.  Melancthon 
said  there  were  more  commandments  than  the  Ten  Commandments 
which  were  vaHd.=*=  In  fact  it  may  be  urged,  I  think,  that  the  Ten 
Commandments  are  not  all  valid;  the  one  concerning  the  keeping 
of  the  seventh  day  has  been  set  aside  by  Christian  custom  which 
keeps  the  first  day.  Just  so  long  as  Protestant  ethics  fails  to  find 
a  deeper  sanction  than  the  sanction  of  a  book  per  se,  it  will  lack 
both  unity  and  certainty  in  its  ethical  teaching.  It  is  not,  however, 
a  question  of  the  validity  of  the  Ten  Commandments,  it  is  a  question 
of  finding  a  proper  norm  for  action,  which  will  allow  a  man  to  keep 
not  only  the  Ten  Commandments  but  the  thousand  and  one  other 
commandments  not  included  in  this  table  of  the  law  that  are  valid. 

Again,  it  is  not  seen  that  to  say  that  the  content  of  the  moral  law 
consists  in  loving  your  neighbor  as  yourself  plus  the  keeping  of  the 
Ten  Commandments  is  the  mixing  of  two  things  which  are  not 
homogeneous.  It  is  the  same  as  saying  that  the  correct  method  of 
biblical  exegesis  consists  in  a  spirit  of  fair-mindedness,  plus  the  ac- 
ceptance of  the  fact  that  Moses  wrote  the  Pentateuch.  The  secret 
of  securing  fair-mindedness  in  biblical  exegesis  is  not  to  insist  that 
the  exegete  arrive  at  certain  results ;  to  be  sure  he  must  arrive  at 
them,  but  the  chances  of  his  arriving  at  them  are  destroyed  the 
moment  the  results  are  specified.  The  principle  is  the  same  in 
ethics  and  the  result  is  just  as  vicious.  'To  insist  on  the  law  as  law 
banishes  the  spirit.  It  shows  lack  of  confidence  in  the  very  thing 
desired  in  man,  namely,  the  spirit  of  a  freeborn  son. 

Finally,  the  Church  by  its  doctrine  of  the  infallible  book  assumes 
a  dictatorship  over  society  which  it  cannot  maintain.  It  has  tried 
to  exalt  the  right  of  this  book  to  rule,  by  all  the  arguments  which 
the  Catholic  has  applied  to  the  Church.  "The  book  is  unified  and 
complete  in  every  part."  "The  book  can  not  err."  "It  is  accorded 
as  divine  by  signs  and  wonders."  "It  is  ancient."  But  these  do  not 
suffice  to  make  man  accept  the  "ipse  dixit"  of  the  divine  document  as 
reason  for  action.  If  it  is  asked  why  Protestantism  is  ethically 
impotent,  the  answer  is  that  Protestantism  has  attempted  the  im- 
possible. It  has  sought  to  play  the  dictator  rather  than  the  helper. 
Catholicism  is  in  a  far  better  position  to  play  the  dictator  than  is 
Protestantism,  for  it  has  undertaken  the  task  in  a  serious  way,  and 
there  is  more  adaptability  in  an  institution  than  there  is  in  a  book — 
the  hierarchy  does  move,  a  book  does  not.  The  task  which  Luther 
outlined  for  the  Protestant  Church  was  fraught  with  far  more  power 
than  the  one  it  has  actually  undertaken.  The  authority  to  which  he 
appealed  was  neither  the  external  authority  of  a  book  nor  that  of  a 
church,  but  the  immanent  authority  of  life. 


♦Melancthon;  Loci  VI. 


24  THE    FUNCTION    OF    CHRISTIAN    ETHICS. 

JESUS  AS  THE  REVEALER  OF  A  LEGALISTIC  IDEAL. 

Newman  Smyth  makes  the  function  of  Christian  ethics  to  be  the 
setting  forth  of  the  content  of  the  ideal  revealed  by  Jesus.  This 
is  right  or  wrong  according  to  the  idea  which  one  has  of  the  ideal 
which  Jesus  reveals.  By  this  principle  Newman  Smyth  seeks  to 
advance  beyond  the  legalism  of  a  book,  yet  his  ethics  seems  to  me 
to  be  somewhat  legalistic  in  principle.  Although  his  Christian  Ethics 
in  many  places  is  obscure,  and  the  one  who  reads  it  always  labors 
under  the  fear  that  perhaps  he  has  misunderstood  the  author,  I  think 
that  a  number  of  rather  lengthy  quotations  will  suffice  to  give  us  its 
point  of  view.  *The  moralist  is  the  man  with  an  ideal.  He  can  not 
appear  among  men  as  a  moral  teacher  unless  he  brings  some  idea 
of  good  which  he  would  stamp  on  human  life.  The  moral  law-giver 
is  always  the  man  who  has  had  some  pattern  shown  him  on  the  holy 
mount.  The  moral  enters  and  lingers  in  our  consciousness  in  some 
vision  of  the  ideal.  We  perceive  some  better  thing  to  be  thought 
or  done."  (Smyth's  Ethics,  p.  49.)  "Normative  ethics  will  bring 
to  Ufe  at  every  point  some  idea  of  what  shall  be"  (p.  49).  "The 
ideal  is  given  to  men  in  the  person  of  Christ,  who  was  the  real  exam- 
ple of  it,  and  the  influence  of  whose  Spirit  is  a  creative  power  in  the 
lives  of  other  men"  (p.  52).  "This  ideal  has  also  been  partially 
realized  and  applied  to  life  in  many  directions,  during  the  course  of 
Christian  history  which  has  proceeded  from  its  influence,  and  it  is 
still  further  to  be  realized  and  interpreted  in  the  progress  of  Chris- 
tian life  and  thought"  (p.  52).  "Christian  ethics  will  be  conse- 
quently the  unfolding  and  application  to  human  life  in  all  its  spheres 
and  relations  of  the  divinely  human  ideal  which  has  been  historically 
given  in  Christ"  (p.  57).  "The  present  and  continual 
condition  of  the  apprehension  of  the  Christian  ideal  is 
through  moral  oneness  with  the  spirit  of  it.  'But  if  any 
man  hath  not  the  spirit  of  Christ  he  is  none  of  his' " 
(p.  52).  "The  sole  and  ultimate  Christian  authority  is  the 
Holy  Spirit  which  Christ  has  sent.  The  special  and  outward  means 
of  the  communication  of  the  mind  that  was  in  Jesus  is  the  testimony 
of  the  apostolic  scriptures.  The  necessary  inward  judge  of  what  is 
Christian,  that  is,  of  what  is  the  teachings  of  the  Spirit  is  the  common 
Christian  consciousness,  or  the  continuous  and  ever-renewing  testi- 
mony of  the  Church"  (p.  75).  "Since  the  ideal  is  still  in  progress 
of  revelation  and  will  continue  to  manifest  itself  in  larger  and  higher 
realization  of  good  until  the  end  of  the  world  age,  it  is  folly  to  wish 
to  bring  back  the  moral  standard  of  any  past  age"  (p.  76).  "The 
harder  more  manifold  and  only  Christian  task  is  to  organize  present 
life  in  all  its  spheres  of  industry  and  thought  in  the  spirit  of  Christ. 
That  task  can  be  accomplished  by  no  restoration  of  the  Jerusalem 


U'NIVERSITY 

OF 


THE    FUNCTION    OF    CHRISTIAN    ETHICS.  25 

that  was,  but  by  the  coming  of  the  Jerusalem  which  is  above"  (p. 
78).  In  discussing  the  content  of  the  Christian  ideal  Newman 
Smyth  says :  (i)  "It  is  a  personal  good."  The  beginning  of  it  "lies 
in  the  personal  character"  (p.  loo).  (2)  "It  is  a  social  human  good. 
The  harvest  is  not  the  individual  ingathering  but  the  end  of  the 
world.  The  Christian  conception  of  good  is  to  be  realized  in  the 
consummation  of  the  ages  of  our  human  history"  (p.  100).  "The 
Christian  ideal  is  extensive  over  all  spheres  of  activity.  It  is  an  ideal 
co-extensive  with  Hfe"  (p.  126).  "The  true  human  ideal  in  its  co- 
extension  with  life  must  comprehend  these  separate  goods  and  unite 
in  its  supreme  conception  all  the  worths  of  life.  In  this  organic 
comprehension  of  the  ideal  the  social  welfare,  together  with  the 
individual  attainments  of  good,  is  to  be  included"  (p.  128).  "His- 
tory in  its  profoundest  significance  is  a  moral  and  spiritual  move- 
ment toward  the  ideal  or  highest  good"  (p.  144).  "The  Christian 
ideal  which  has  been  historically  given  in  Christ  as  it  is  to  be  found 
in  the  spiritual  consciousness  of  Christians  is  an  absolute  ideal  .  . 
.  It  is  the  absolute  moral  imperative  of  the  Christian  character"  (p. 
123).  These  different  descriptions  are  hard  for  me  to  understand. 
I  confess  I  can  form  no  such  picture  before  my  mind  as  this  calls 
for.  Jesus  reveals  an  ideal,  he  himself  is  that  ideal,  he  is  the 
embodiment  of  it ;  I  can  understand  what  Smyth  means  here,  it 
would  seem  to  be  about  what  I  mean  when  I  say  Jesus  calls  a  man 
to  be  a  son  of  God ;  but  I  am  totally  confused  when  he  talks  about 
this  ideal  as  only  partially  realized  and  applied  to  life,  as  still  in 
progress  of  revelation,  so  to  continue  until  the  end  of  the  ages,  as 
being  the  new  Jerusalem  which  is  from  above,  as  being  inclusive  of 
all  the  goods  known  to  human  welfare.  My  point  is  this,  how  can 
Jesus  be  the  embodiment  of  the  ideal,  the  eternal  ideal  which  the 
ages  shall  know,  the  Jerusalem  which  is  from  above,  and  yet  be  a 
person  ?  How  can  he  reveal  an  ideal  social  order  and  also  a  personal 
hfe? 

But  more  than  this,  it  seems  to  me  that  the  ideal  which  really  fits 
Smyth's  ethical  system  is  the  ideal  of  a  social  order.  It  is  some- 
thing which  man  must  be  filled  with  the  Holy  Spirit  to  appreciate, 
for  the  Holy  Spirit  is  the  judge  of  the  ideal  and  decides  what  is 
Christian;  the  ideal  in  this  case  does  not  seem  to  be  the  criterion 
of  judgment. 

Smyth  says :  "The  ideal  progresses."  So  far  as  he  has  accounted 
for  it  it  progresses  without  man  being  conscious  of  the  progression. 
Nineteen  hundred  years  ago  it  was  one  thing,  now  it  is  another 
thing.  Man's  business  nineteen  hundred  years  ago  was  to  put  his 
life  in  accord  with  it.  Now  that  it  has  advanced  his  business  is 
still  to  put  his  life  in  accord  with  it.  He  is  no  longer  subject  to  the 
Jerusalem  which  was,  but  he  is  subject  to  the  Jerusalem  which  is  to 


26  THE    FUNCTION    OF    CHRISTIAN    ETHICS. 

be.  Unless  Smyth  can  find  some  principle  by  which  ideals  advance, 
some  unifying  principle  between  his  new  Jerusalem  and  his  old 
Jerusalem,  the  legalism  is  just  as  bad  as  though  Jesus  had  given  to 
man  two  systems  of  laws,  an  old  system,  and  a  new  one,  both  of 
which  were  equally  valid.  As  a  matter  of  fact  Smyth  does  provide 
for  a  principle  of  advance  in  his  doctrine  of  the  Holy  Spirit  in  the 
hearts  of  Christians,  but  hereby  he  seems  to  me  to  have  given  away 
his  whole  case.  Jesus  did  not  give  an  ideal  to  be  the  supreme  stand- 
ard of  man's  life,  but  he  gave  the  Holy  Spirit  which  sits  in  judg- 
ment on  the  ideal. 

Again,  of  what  value  is  it  to  a  man  to  compare  his  ideal  with 
a  perfect  ideal?  This  in  no  way  helps  him;  it  can  only  result  in 
discouragement  for  the  man.  He  is  not  in  any  way  given  a  bridge 
which  will  unite  the  gap,  his  first  impulse  will  be  to  cease  making 
ideals  for  himself,  and  to  seek  to  copy  the  perfect  ideal.  This  sys- 
tem of  copying  ideals  is  unethical.  Man  ceases  to  have  a  life  which 
is  worthy  of  itself,  he  is  always  gazing  up  into  the  heavens  longing 
for  something  which  is  out  of  his  reach,  and  also  out  of  connection 
with  his  life. 

According  to  the  view  here  to  be  set  forth,  what  Jesus  gives  to 
man  is  not  an  ideal  of  a  social  order,  but  a  vocation,  which  becomes 
a  criterion  by  which  ideal  social  orders  may  be  judged.  Man  is  left 
to  work  out  his  own  ideals  in  accord  with  his  vocation  in  the  same 
way  that  he  makes  laws  for  conduct.  Man  progresses,  and  his  ideals 
must  change,  he  grows,  and  he  must  order  his  ideals  differently  than 
before.  So  far  as  his  vocation  is  concerned  he  never  advances,  he 
never  reaches  the  place  where  he  ceases  to  be  a  son  of  God,  nor  does 
he  reach  the  place  where  the  necessity  of  living  in  accord  with  the 
principles  of  the  brotherhood  of  man  will  depart  from  him.  His 
ideals  will  take  in  all  societ}',  just  because  he  has  chosen  as  his  voca- 
tion to  be  a  son  of  God  who  rules  in  all  society.  But  to  say  that  the 
ideal  progresses  in  itself,  takes  the  helm  out  of  the  hand  of  man  and 
he  is  left  the  helpless  sport  of  the  ideal.  If  a  man  is  born  of  the 
spirit  of  a  son  of  God  he  can  create  new  Jerusalems  for  himself. 

JESUS  AS  A  MORAL    LEGISLATOR. 

A  line  of  thought  which  seems  to  be  legalistic  in  principle  is 
that  which  would  derive  from  the  teachings  of  Jesus  a  direct  solu- 
tion of  the  industrial  and  social  problems  of  our  time.  The  following 
quotation  from  Richard  T.  Ely's  "Social  Aspects  of  Christianity"  is 
an  illustration  of  what  I  have  in  mind.  His  criticism  of  the  church 
is  that : 

"The  ministers  of  the  Church  repeat  often  enough  the  words 
of  the  Golden  Rule ;  but  the  question  arises,  'How  am  I  to  show  my 
love  for  my  fellowmen?     How  am  I  to  go  to  work  to  elevate  them, 


THE    FUNCTION    OV    CHRISTIAN    ETHICS.  27 

to  make  them  both  happier  and  better?  How  am  I,  as  a  follower 
of  Christ,  to  conduct  myself  in  the  industrial  world  ?  What  are  my 
duties  as  employer,  as  landlord  or  tenant,  as  creditor  or  debtor? 
What  position  should  I  take  on  the  land  question,  on  the  subject  of 
labor  organization,  and  the  other  aspects  of  the  great  labor  prob- 
lems ?'  "  The  presupposition  of  all  such  writers  is  that  in  Jesus' 
words  we  have  regulations  for  the  different  departments  of  life. 
They  seem  to  think  that  if  we  could  get  back  to  Jesus'  teachings  on 
such  and  such  subjects  we  would  have  our  troubles  settled,  that  with- 
out further  effort  we  could  apply  the  regulations  which  he  sets  forth 
to  our  present  day  problems.  Dr.  Gerald  D.  Heuver's  book  on  the 
'Teachings  of  Jesus  in  Regard  to  Wealth"  is  a  book  that  by  a  careful 
exegetical  study  leads  to  the  conclusion  that  we  do  not  "find  in 
Jesus'  teachings  an  economic  system — it  would  have  been  impossible 
for  Christ  to  have  given  us  a  system  which  would  be  universally 
suitable.  It  is  with  economic  institutions  as  with  political  ones, 
what  suits  one  does  not  suit  another."  ("Teachings  of  Jesus  in  Re- 
gard to  Wealth,"  p.  200.)  This  I  think  is  substantially  correct,  and 
yet  Dr.  Heuver  does  not  seem  to  me  to  grasp  clearly  the  significance 
for  all  ethical  conduct  of  the  moral  vocation  which  Jesus  does  give 
to  a  man,  and  which  will  undoubtedly  furnish  a  criterion  for  dealing 
with  such  a  subject  as  wealth. 

The  poverty  of  Jesus'  precepts  which  can  directly  be  applied 
to  conduct,  ought  to  teach  us  that  his  greatness  does  not  consist  in 
the  giving  of  a  few  regulations.  At  the  same  time  the  thought  that 
one  living  in  a  stage  of  society  such  as  surrounded  him  could  legis- 
late for  all  time  is,  considered  from  every  standpoint,  absurd.  The 
legalism  would  be  worse  than  that  in  which  the  Catholic  Church 
would  land  us,  for  the  Catholic  Church  has  worked  out  its  casuistry 
until  it  covers  all  departments  of  life,  while  Jesus'  teachings  are  com- 
paratively meager  and  fragmentar}\  It  is  only  when  we  come  to  the 
position  that  Jesus  offers  to  a  man  a  moral  vocation  which  the  man 
is  to  work  out  for  himself  in  his  own  sphere  of  life  that  we  get  a 
concept  which  is  rich  enough  to  be  of  aid  to  man  in  every  sphere 
of  activitv.  By  appropriating  this  vocation  he  is  at  the  same  time 
true  to  Jesus  and  at  liberty  to  advance  to  the  solution  of  any  moral 
problem.  Jesus'  words  are  of  value  to  a  man  because  they  help 
him  understand  his  own  vocation.  By  means  of  this  vocation  he  is 
able  to  judge  what  in  these  teachings  is  of  temporary  value  and  what 
is  of  eternal  worth. 

THE    WORK    OF     SCHLKIERMACHER. 

The  work  of  Schleiermacher  marks  an  epoch  in  the  history  of 
Christian  ethics.  He  said  that  the  function  of  Christian  ethics  was 
to  set  forth  the  conduct  life  of  the  man  who  had  been  redeemed  by 


28  THE    FUNCTION    OK    CHRISTIAN    ETHICS. 

Jesus  Christ.  **Sie  wird  nichts  sein  konnen  als  eine  Beschreibung 
derjenigen  Handlungsweise,  welche  aus  der  Herrschaft  des  christ- 
lich  bestimmten  religiosen  Selbstbewusstseins  entsteht."  (Schleier- 
macher,  "Christliche  Ethik."  Einleitung.)  He  thereby  distinguished 
Christian  ethics  from  philosophical  ethics,  and  also  from  a  Chris- 
tian ethics,  philosophically  constructed.  (R.  Rothe,  Theologische 
Ethik;  Hofmann,  Theologische  Ethik.)  Philosophical  ethics  has 
sought  to  draw  from  out  of  man's  nature,  in  accord  with  the  prin- 
ciples of  reason,  a  criterion  for  action,  and  on  the  basis  of  this  to 
formulate  a  system  of  ethics.  Schleiermacher  says  in  his  "Intro- 
duction to  Christian  Ethics"  that  Christian  ethics  seeks  to  be  his- 
torical while  philosophical  ethics  seeks  to  be  universal.  This 
seems  to  me  to  be  a  dangerous  admission,  since  the  moment 
Christianity  gives  up  its  claim  to  be  universal,  it  is  doomed.  But 
need  it  give  up  that  claim?  Historicity,  in  the  sense  in  which 
Schleiermacher  means  it,  is  not  inconsistent  with  universality.  An 
ethical  system  may  be  both.  The  question  as  to  its  universality  is  a 
question  apart  from  its  historicity.  Just  because  Christian  ethics 
takes  upon  itself  to  expound  the  New  Testament  type  of  life,  it 
ought  not  to  be  prejudged  as  lacking  in  universality. 

When  we  come  to  the  test  of  universality,  what  is  to  be  the  test, 
will  it  be  the  speculative  test  or  will  it  be  the  test  of  experience? 
Is  there  any  valid  test,  as  to  whether  or  not  a  system  of  ethics  is 
universal,  except  the  test  of  its  efficiency  ?  Instead  of  philosophical 
ethics  asking:  "Why  should  not  Christian  ethics  become  universal," 
has  not  the  latter  the  right  to  make  philosophical  ethics  show  cause 
why  it  should  not  become  historical?  Is  not  the  experience  of  cen- 
turies a  better  recommendation  than  the  deductions  of  reason  ?  The 
significance  of  Schleiermacher's  work  seems  to  me  to  be  just  this, 
that  he  calls  men  back  to  the  test  of  experience.  Is  not  the  very 
historicity  of  Christian  ethics,  the  fact  that  it  has  been  tested  through 
centuries,  an  argument  for  its  universality?  The  chances  of  some 
one's  coming  along  and  creating  a  new  system  of  ethical  values 
are  about  as  great  as  of  some  one's  coming  and  creating  a  new  lan- 
guage or  a  new  religion. 

This  being  understood,  I  think  it  must  be  admitted  that  there  is 
a  philosophical  test  from  the  "Nature  of  Man"  which  may  be  applied 
by  philosophy  to  Christian  ethics,  and  it  is  here  that  there  is  a 
demand  for  an  ethical  apologetic.  A  task,  however,  which  should 
be  kept  distinct  from  the  exposition  of  an  ethical  system.  It  must 
be  admitted  that  Christian  ethics  may  not  be  a  universal  ethics.  If 
any  man  finds  another  system  of  ethics  which  he  considers  more 
universal,  then  it  must  be  left  open  to  him  to  expound  that  system. 
But  to  the  man  who,  in  the  activity  to  which  Christian  ethics  calls 
him,  finds  a  type  of  life  universally  worthful,  it  is  open  to  expound 


THE    FUNCTION    OF    CHRISTIAN    ETHICS.  29 

the  content  of  that  new  life.     He  can  be  perfectly  assured  that  the 
test  which  he  has  applied  is  valid  above  any  speculative  one. 

Schleiermacher  in  his  work  is  also  of  significance  to  us  in  that 
while  treating  of  the  Christian  religion  as  a  historical  religion  he 
gives  us  a  principle  by  which  we  can  distinguish  between  the  tem- 
poral and  the  eternal  in  that  religion.  He  makes  the  God-con- 
sciousness of  the  Christian  to  be  the  abiding  thing  in  Christianity 
and  thus  he  saves  men  from  a  legalistic  devotion  to  dogma  and  to 
church,  and  yet  at  the  same  time  keeps  them  true  to  the  essence 
of  that  reHgion.  The  same  principle  has  significance  for  ethics, 
from  it  we  can  also  draw  a  principle  by  which  Christian  ethics  can 
be  true  to  the  essence  of  Christianity  and  yet  not  be  bound  in  any 
legalistic  way  to  any  one  stage  of  that  religion.  Christian  ethics 
becomes  a  setting  forth  of  a  conduct  life  of  the  man  in  whom  the 
God-consciousness  has  been  aroused.  What  Jesus  gives  a  man  is 
not  a  set  of  precepts  but  a  divine  vocation  and  ethics  has  for  its 
function  the  setting  forth  of  that  vocation.  This  line  of  thought 
first  entered  upon  by  Schleiermacher  has  been  the  basis  for  much  of 
the  subsequent  work  in  Christian  ethics.  In  Germany  he  has  been 
followed  by  such  men  as  Herrmann  and  Kostlein.  In  Denmark 
Krarup  has  followed  the  same  line  of  development. 


CHAPTER    III. 

A  CONSTRUCTIVE  STATEMENT  OF  FUNCTION  OF  CHRISTIAN  ETHICS. 

— SIGNIFICANCE  FOR  ETHICS  THAT  MAN  IS  CALLED 

TO  A  PERSONAL  LIFE. 

The  Christian  man,  is  a  man  who  has  been  called  to  a  personal* 
life.  This  and  this  alone  he  can  take  directly  from  Jesus.  The 
Christian  community,  is  a  body  of  men  united  in  a  common  faith 
that  there  is  for  them  such  a  life.  The  essence  of  their  religion  is 
that  back  of  all  the  changing  process  of  life,  there  stands  a  per- 
sonal God,  who  has  created  the  world  and  who  governs  it.  That 
personal  will  is  the  source  of  all  the  change  which  meets  the  eyes 
of  men.  The  significance  of  all  this  for  men  is  that  in  this  world 
of  time  and  space  they  must  become  personal  beings.  They  are 
created  that  they  may  grow  into  the  image  of  God,  who  is  the  perfect 
moral  personality.  There  is  for  them  the  possibility  of  a  right- 
eousness like  unto  God's.  It  makes  little  difference  which  one 
of  the  customary  terms  is  used  to  describe  the  Christian  man, 
whether  we  call  him  a  son  of  God,  a  citizen  in  the  kingdom  of 
God,  a  friend  of  Jesus  Christ,  the  essence  of  them  all  is  that  man 
has  been  called  to  personal  life.  He  is  thereby  distinguished 
from  a  man  under  the  Old  Testament  covenant,  who  was  called  to 
give  obedience  to  an  impersonal  law  and  who  instead  of  being  a 
person,  was  a  slave.  He  is  thereby  distinguished  from  the  Con- 
fucianist  who  worships  the  past  instead  of  a  person  who  transcends 
all  time.  He  is  thereby  distinguished  from  the  Buddhist,  who 
seeks  the  extinction  of  personality.  The  Christian  religion  is 
unique  in  the  particular  that  it  claims  for  man  the  power  to  live  a 
full  personal  life.* 

To  be  a  person  means  that  the  norm  for  conduct  has  been  located 
within  oneself.  A  person  will  obey  laws,  but  the  laws  will  be 
laws  whose  value  he  himself  recognizes.  He  will  work  accord- 
ing to  plans  and  purposes,  but  these  plans  and  purposes  will  be 
formulated  by  him.  He  will  live  in  a  world  of  time  and  space,  but 
it  will  always  be  with  a  consciousness  that  he  is  superior  to  time 
and  space. 

♦The  word  personality  is  used  here  with  a  moral  significance. 


THE    FUNCTION    OF    CHRISTIAN    ETHICS.  3 1 

"Man  pflegt  das  eigentumliche  Wesen  der  Personlichkeit,  wo 
durch  sie  von  alien  anderen  und  namentlich  auch  von  alien  anderen 
belebten  und  beseelten  Realitaten  sich  unterscheidet  vor  allem  ins 
Selbstbewusstsein  zu  setzen."     (Kostlin  Christliche  Ethik.,  p.    i.) 

"Ein  Leben  in  selbst  bestimmung  ist  so  das  Leben  der  per- 
sonlichen  Geistes  und  zwar  einer  Selbstbestimmung,  welche  be- 
stimmte  Zwecke  sich  setzt,  eines  Willens,  der  seinen  eigenen  Zielen 
zustrebt."     (Kostlin  Ethik.,  p.  6.) 

This  call  to  personal  life  confronts  man  as  a  problem,  it  is 
not  an  endowment,  but  a  task  to  be  accomplished,  as  some  one 
has  expressed  it,  man  has  on  his  hands  a  "fight  for  character." 
It  is  in  the  solving  of  this  problem  that  Christian  ethics  must 
be  of  service.  But  by  virtue  of  the  fact  that  the  norm  for  conduct 
has  been  located  inside  the  personal  life  the  function  of  Christian 
ethics  has  been  determined.  It  cannot  content  itself  with  the 
expounding  of  an  external  law,  which  is  to  be  obeyed  by  the  man 
who  is  working  at  the  problem  of  personal  life.  It  cannot  content 
itself  with  outlining  plans  and  purposes,  since  the  very  essence  of 
personal  life  is  that  a  man  makes  laws  and  plans  for  himself.  It 
cannot  content  itself  with  expounding  a  tradition.  Such  an  ethics 
would  have  to  be  transcended  in  order  that  a  man  might  become 
completely  moral.  The  training  of  a  personality  is  a  different 
problem  from  training  an  automaton.  The  problem  has  changed 
from  the  description  of  an  inanimate  tradition,  to  the  description  of 
life  in  terms  of  a  self-conscious  being.  The  point  of  this  thesiii 
might  be  summed  up  by  saying,  that  the  method  of  Christian 
ethics  is  pre-determined  by  the  function  which  it  must  perform. 
Just  because  it  must  work  in  the  interests  of  personal  beings,  there 
are  certain  methods  it  cannot  use.  It  must  cease  to  be  interested 
primarily  in  cataloguing  certain  good  deeds,  and  turn  its  attention 
to  securing  good  men.  It  has  noiif  the  very  difficult  task  of  helping 
the  man,  zvho  must  decide  for  himself  n'hat  are  good  deeds.  Chris- 
tian ethics  becomes  the  defining  of  a  z'ocation. 

It  is  necessary  to  make  clear,  that  Christian  ethics  in  no  way 
^akes  the  place  of  an  ethical  experience  on  the  part  of  an  individual. 
It  does  not  issue  the  call  to  personal  life,  it  presupposes  such  a 
call  which  has  come  to  man  out  of  the  reality  of  which  he  is  a  part. 
It  cannot  create  personal  life  any  more  than  systematic  theology 
can  create  faith.  Systematic  theology  presupposes  faith  as  a  fact 
which  has  grown  up  out  of  life — the  union  of  man's  life  and  the 
reality  which  he  meets  in  Christ.  Its  function  is  to  help  man  to 
enter  more  completely  into  the  experience  of  faith,  to  enable  him 
to  imderstand  its  meaning.  It  has  the  same  practical  value  as  a 
text  book  on  astronomy.  A  text  book  on  astronomy  may  help  a 
man  better  to  adapt  himself  to  the  benefits  of  the  sun's  rays,  but 


23  THE    FUNCTION    OF    CHRISTIAN    ETHICS. 

astronomical  theories  are  a  poor  substitute  for  sunlight.  As  a 
science  presupposes  an  experience  of  which  it  seeks  to  give  ac- 
count, so  a  text  book  on  ethics  must  presuppose  an  ethical  experi- 
ence on  the  part  of  man  entirely  independent  of  itself.  Without 
this  experience  its  work  is  valueless.  The  church  has  always  in- 
sisted that  the  Holy  Spirit  alone  redeems  a  man,  and  it  is  right, 
the  ethical  import  of  this  doctrine  being,  that  ethical  experience 
must  come  before  there  can  be  ethical  culture.  The  truest  ethical 
experience  does  not  come  outside  of  the  storm  and  stress  of  life. 
But  ethics  can  be  of  service  to  a  man  by  furthering  the  experience 
which  it  cannot  create. 

Ethical  teaching  can  free  a  man  in  his  ethical  life,  by  giving 
him  a  larger  insight  into  the  nature  of  that  life.  A  good  illus- 
tration of  what  is  meant  is  the  way  the  science  of  architecture 
frees  a  man  in  the  building  of  a  house.  Suppose  that  a  house  has 
been  in  process  of  construction  for  a  long  time,  and  when  it  is 
half  erected,  a  new  workman  is  put  on  the  job.  There  are  three 
ways  open  to  him  to  work:  he  can  carry  out  in  detail  the  minute 
instructions  of  another  man,  in  which  case  he  is  always  a  slave 
with  little  comprehension  of  what  he  is  doing  and  little  unity  in 
his  efforts;  or  he  may  reject  all  directions  and  start  to  build  in  a 
free  way  by  himself,  in  which  case  there  is  little  organic  unity 
between  what  he  does  and  what  has  been  done  before;  or  in  the 
third  place,  he  can  get  hold  of  the  original  purpose  of  the  house, 
he  can  learn  the  meaning  and  significance  of  what  has  been  done 
in  terms  of  this  purpose,  and  on  the  basis  of  this  he  can  recon- 
struct whatever  has  been  faulty  and  proceed  to  construct  the  re- 
mainder of  the  structure.  He  is  neither  a  slave  to  the  past,  nor  an 
anarchistic  wrecker  of  the  past,  but  occupies  a  free  constructive 
attitude  toward  both  past  and  future.  This  illustration  helps  in 
the  elucidation  of  the  point.  It  should  not  be  pushed  too  far,  but 
it  makes  clear,  I  think,  that  the  unifying  of  conduct  with  refer- 
ence to  its  fundamental  purpose,  frees  a  man  in  his  activity. 

All  this  is  thoroughly  in  accord  with  our  study  of  Jesus'  method, 
in  that  he  sought  not  to  give  men  precepts  for  life,  but  to  give 
them  an  understanding  of  their  vocation.  He  is  willing  to  trust 
the  future  in  the  hands  of  men  who  have  been  taught  to  distin- 
guish between  the  promptings  of  Mammon  and  the  will  of  God. 
He  has  analysed  their  life  and  laid  before  them  its  purpose  and 
the  conditions  under  which  it  is  to  be  lived.  His  work  is  more 
accurately  described  as  that  of  a  spiritual  physician,  who  ministers 
to  each  one  as  he  sees  need,  at  the  same  time  giving  with  the  pre- 
scription the  basic  principle  on  which  the  prescription  was  made. 
As  Herrmann  says,  ''Jesus  ist  nicht  der  ansicht  das  wir  schon  gut 
handeln  wenn  wir  die  gebote  in  andern  erfuUen  wollen,  auch  dem 


THE    FUNCTION    OF    CHRISTIAN    ETHICS.  33 

nicht  wenn  wir  die  gebote  von  Jesus  selLst  empfangen  zu  haben 
nieinen,  er  hat  daher  uber-haupt  kein  geboten  gegeben,  die  keine 
weitere  befolgtwerden  konnen,  was  in  seinem  munde  wie  ein 
gebot  klingt,  ist  immer  nur  eine  Anregung  fur  die  Junger  sich 
selbst  klar  zu  machen  was  sie  thun  sollen.  Denn  Jesus  wuszte  das 
der  Mench  nur  dann  warhaft  lebig  und  innerlich  mit  Gott  ver- 
binden  ist,  wenn  er  aus  eigenen  freier  Uberzeugung  heraus  handelt, 
also  wahrhaftig  ist  und  nicht  schauspielert."  (Herrmann,  "Romish 
und  Evangelische  Sittlichkeit,"  p.  135.) 

Christian  ethics  comes  to  a  man  confronted  with  a  problem,  his 
problem  is  the  realization  of  a  personal  life  in  the  world  of  time 
and  space.  Christian  ethics  did  not  create  this  problem,  nor  should 
it  relieve  man  of  the  problem,  since  it  is  in  the  solving  of  this 
problem  that  man  comes  nearest  to  his  God.  Anything  which 
solves  the  problem  by  taking  it  away  from  man  does  him  an  untold 
injury.  This  seems  to  me  to  be  the  fault  of  all  systems  of  casu- 
istry. 

T.  B.  Strong,  in  his  ''Christian  Ethics,"  discusses  the  need  of 
the  Church  again  taking  up  the  function  of  discipline.  He  says 
that  the  danger  from  casuistry  lies  only  in  its  misuse.  "The  danger 
of  casuistry-  consists  in  a  certain  moral  temper,  which  appears  when 
ever  the  intellect  is  allowed  to  paralyze  the  will,  whether  this 
results  in  positive  immoral  action  or  not."  The  danger  from 
casuistry  seems  to  me  a  greater  one  than  this,  it  consists  rather  in 
a  misconception  of  the  function  of  the  ethical  teacher,  for  it  gives 
in  the  stead  of  a  man,  who  would  make  clear  to  people  their  moral 
problems,  a  man  who  would  take  their  problems  away  from  them. 

Ethics  can  help  a  man  by  making  the  problem  more  definitely 
his,  by  showing  him  what  are  the  conditions  which  constitute  the 
problem,  and  what  are  the  conditions,  inherent  in  the  life  of  man 
and  his  circumstances,  which  govern  the  solution  of  the  problem. 
Christian  ethics  is  more  concerned,  lest  a  man  should  dodge  his 
moral  problem.  The  strenuousness  of  Jesus'  teaching  is  all  along 
this  line,  the  moral  problem  is  such  a  serious  one  in  his  eyes  that 
he  summons  his  strongest  language  to  make  the  issue  clear  to  man. 
The  loss  of  one  of  the  members  of  the  body  is  nothing  in  his  eyes 
when  compared  to  the  sacredness  of  a  moral   conviction. 

"But  further  the  constant  effort  of  Jesus  in  the  training  of  his 
disciples  was  to  create  in  them  a  moral  consciousness  identical  with 
his  own,  and  by  this  means  to  put  them  in  a  condition  to  carry 
on  his  work  of  criticism,  to  pursue  his  task  of  distinguishing  be- 
tween that  which  is  eternal  and  that  which  is  perishable  in  the 
Old  Testament.  Jesus  did  not  employ  a  didactic  process  in  his 
work.  He  laid  down  its  principles,  applying  them  by  way  of 
example  to  a  few  particular  cases,  such  as  the  Sabbath,  fasting, 


34  THE    FUNCTION    OF    CHRISTIAN    ETHICS. 

food  not  to  limit  the  reformation  but  to  introduce  it  to  reveal  its 
spirit  and  open  the  way  for  its  further  progress."  (Sabatier, 
Religions  of  Authority,  p.  291.) 

It  was  said  that  it  is  the  function  of  Christian  ethics  to  give 
insight  into  the  nature  of  the  moral  problem  and  thus  to  further 
morality.  It  will  be  well  to  investigate  further  along  this  line. 
Christian  ethics  has  an  interpretative  function,  it  seeks  to  give 
meaning  to  all  the  phases  of  life  by  interpreting  them  in  terms  of 
the  end  of  life,  which  for  a  Christian  is  the  realization  of  person- 
ality. It  affords  by  this  method  the  strongest  incentive  to  moral- 
ity. An  ethics  which  calls  for  mere  blind  obedience  may  flourish 
for  a  time,  but  its  life  will  be  short.  That  discipline,  which  exhibits 
to  a  man  the  significance  of  an  act  in  terms  of  his  own  vocation, 
makes  the  act  interesting,  the  individual  immediately  identifies 
himself  with  the  act,  it  is  no  longer  an  isolated  thing,  but  is  a 
part  of  the  life  of  the  actor.  Take  for  instance  a  lecture  on  "Pas- 
toral Duties."  A  mere  catalogue  of  the  duties  of  a  pastor  would 
in  no  way  inspire  to  action,  even  though  there  were  the  enforcing 
sanction  of  a  fat  yearly  salary;  but  a  treatment  of  pastoral  duties 
which  related  them  all  organically  to  the  great  purpose  of  a  man's 
life,  would  arouse  enthusiasm,  the  sanction  would  become  an  im- 
manent one,  as  strong  as  a  man's  desire  for  life,  and  his  clear  per- 
ception of  the  relation  of  those  activities  to  his  life.  Such  a  system 
of  ethics  has  as  its  sanction  the  authority  of  life.  Other  systems 
may  call  in  the  external  sanction  of  an  institution,  but  the  Christian 
ethicist  bases  his  authority  on  the  truth  of  his  statement.  His 
authority  is  the  authority  of  experience.  Such  an  ethics  starts  with 
one  presupposition ;  granted  that  a  man  has  felt  the  call  to  personal 
life;  and  it  answers  the  question,  what  is  the  significance  of  all 
this  for  his  earthly  conduct?  The  motive  will  grow  out  of  the 
call  which  he  has  heard. 

The  function  of  Christian  ethics  may  be  described  as  the  mak- 
ing of  intelligent  workmen  in  the  realm  of  character  building. 
Two  things  are  necessary  to  an  intelligent  workman :  First,  a  con- 
ception of  the  end,  and,  second,  a  conception  of  the  means  to  be  used. 
Christian  ethics  has  no  other  function  than  to  give  men  a  clear 
conception  of  the  ends  of  life  with  reference  to  the  means  with 
which  he  is  to  build.  Its  method  is  to  promote  righteousness  by 
clarifying  for  men  the  nature  and  meaning  of  their  moral  probkm. 
It  works  on  the  supposition  that  better  ultimate  results  will  be 
produced  by  well  trained  free  men,  than  by  carefully  guided  slaves. 

The  problem  of  training  a  moral  man  has  much  in  common 
with  the  training  of  a  biblical  exegete.  Both  men  are  under  obli- 
gation to  arrive  at  results,  and  these  results  are  inwrought  with  the 
nature  of  things.    Will  you  seek  to  make  a  good  exegete  by  placing 


THE    FUNCTION    OF    CHRISTIAN    ETHICS. 


35 


in  his  hands  a  set  of  results,  which  he  must  verify,  or  will  you 
place  in  his  hands  a  right  method  and  allow  him  to  find  his  own 
results?  There  are  those  who  look  upon  past  results  as  sacred, 
and  to  these  they  would  limit  a  man,  who  would  make  of  man's 
life  an  eternal  repetition  of  the  results  of  other  men's  lives.  By 
this  method  a  man  becomes  a  copyist.  If  one  does  not  choose  this 
method,  there  is  but  one  other  method  open  to  him,  and  that  is  the 
method  which  trusts  a  man  with  a  right  heart  to  find  the  right 
results.  This  latter  method  is  a  dangerous  one,  it  leaves  a  way 
open  for  mistakes,  but,  according  to  Christianity,  it  is  the  only 
method  which  will  ultimately  result  in  personal  life.  With  this 
task  before  a  man  the  discipline  which  will  most  help  him  will  be 
the  one  which  helps  him  to  rely  upon  himself.  It  will  be  the  one 
which  clearly  defines  for  him  the  nature  and  meaning  of  his  task. 
It  cannot  dictate  results  for  this  would  deny  its  main  function  by 
distrusting  man's  capacity  to  do  the  very  thing  it  urges  him  to  do. 

METHODS    IN    CHRISTIAN    ETHICS. 

Christian  ethics  has  for  its  function  the  valuation  of  life  on 
the  basis  of  man's  vocation  to  which  he  has  been  called  through 
Jesus  Christ.  This  throws  upon  the  ethical  teacher  the  task  of 
understanding  first  the  nature  of  the  vocation  to  which  man  has 
been  called.  Since  man  has  been  called  to  sonship  to  God  what 
are  the  implications  for  conduct  in  this  call?  What  are  the  condi- 
tions by  which  a  man  can  enter  into  fellowship  with  a  free  moral 
personality  who  has  called  him  to  be  a  friend  and  not  a  servant. 
Herrmann  in  his  "Ethik,"  begins  with  the  conditions  of  the  moral 
life,  its  origin  and  problems,  and  then  in  the  last  part  of  his  book 
introduces  Jesus  as  the  Savior  of  man  from  the  struggle  and 
difficulties  in  which  he  finds  himself  in  working  at  his  moral  prob- 
lem. Herrmann  say  on  p.  26,  that  the  beginning  of  the  moral 
struggle  within  us  is  at  the  time  when  we  come  into  contact  with 
another  personality.*  This  truth  that  the  moral  struggle  is  created 
as  well  as  solved  through  contact  with  a  moral  personality,  seems 
to  me  to  justify  the  Christian  ethicist  in  starting  with  the  call 
which  Jesus  issues  to  man.  One  could  begin  with  the  discussion 
of  the  relation  of  the  moral  will  to  the  senses  and  with  the  con- 
ditions of  freedom,  thus  defining  beforehand  the  moral  life;  but 


*"Durch  einen  eigenthiimlichen  Eindruch  von  Menchen  muss  eine 
Bewegung  in  uns  entstehen  in  deren  Richtung  die  Sittlichkeit  liegt,  die 
sich  selbst  von  Naturlichen  Leben  unterscheidet.  Es  geschieht  das  immer, 
wenn  Andere  so  atif  uns  wirken,  dass  wir  zu  ihnen  Vertrauen  fassen.  Wen 
uns  das  Widerfahrt,  richten  wir  uns  nach  Andern.  Der  Anfang  der  Sittlich- 
keit an  einem  bestimmten  Punkt  liegt  immer  in  der  Macht  der  personlichen 
Autoritat."    Hermann  Ethik,  p.  26. 


^6  THE    FUNCTION    OF    CHRISTIAN    ETHICS. 

the  other  method  seems  to  me  the  proper  one  in  writing  a  Christian 
ethics. 

The  first  task  then  of  the  Christian  ethicist  is  to  define  fhe 
Christian  vocation,  since  it  is  a  call  to  a  certain  kind  of  life,  he 
must  organically  describe  that  life.  To  give  a  concrete  example 
Paul  is  doing  the  work  of  an  ideal  ethicist  when  (I  Cor.,  12,  12-31) 
he  describes  the  nature  of  the  Christian  life,  by  the  analogy  of  the 
body  and  its  members,  each  part  of  which  contributes  its  several 
part.  "Whether  one  member  suffers  all  suffer  with  it,  or  one 
member  is  honored  all  the  members  rejoice  with  it."  What  he 
gives  here  is  an  insight  into  the  nature  of  moral  life,  even  as  a 
lecturer  on  physiology  works  in  the  interest  of  health,  when  he 
gives  insight  into  the  normal  workings  of  the  human  body. 

The  vocation  having  been  defined  the  further  task  comes  of 
valuating  man's  life  in  terms  of  it.  The  Christian  virtues  must  be 
organically  related  by  showing  their  relation  to  the  Christian  vo- 
cation. The  necessity  of  this  grows  out  of  the  fact  that  only  thus 
can  the  Christian  escape  a  legalism  imposed  upon  him  by  those 
who  exhibit  virtues  to  be  copied.  No  virtue  is  an  end  in  itself, 
it  is  but  the  attitude  of  the  self  in  its  progress  towards  realization. 
(Cf.  Dewey's  ** Syllabus  on  Study  of  Ethics,"  p.  134.)  The  danger 
of  isolating  a  virtue  from  the  self  lies  in  the  fact  that  emphasis 
on  a  single  attitude  of  the  self,  leaves  a  man  without  a  knowledge 
of  the  virtue's  larger  significance.  For  instance,  self-denial,  when 
over  emphasized,  leads  to  absolute  weakness.  Is  there  not  a  rela- 
tionship between  self-denial  and  self-affirmation?  Witness  Jesus 
driving  the  money  changers  from  the  Temple.  On  the  other  hand 
self-affirmation  may  be  overstressed.  The  point  is  that  there  must 
be  some  criterion  by  which  virtues  may  be  judged.  It  is  not 
sufficient  just  to  balance  them  against  each  other.  They  must  be 
co-ordinated  with  reference  to  an  end,  a  vocation. 

This  method  excludes  also  what  might  be  called  a  grafting 
method,  the  taking  of  a  system  of  virtues  from  outside  the  Chris- 
tian life  and  grafting  them  into  the  Christian  principle  of  love. 
This  method  prevailed  in  the  early  church  when  the  virtues  of 
Greek  ethics  were  brought  into  the  Christian  system,  and  enforced 
by  the  sanction  which  the  Christian  religion  had  to  offer.  This 
method  also  prevailed  to  quite  an  extent  in  the  philosophically 
constructed  ethics  in  vogue  previous  to  the  time  of  Schleiermacher. 
This,  if  I  mistake  not,  is  the  method  of  Newman  Smyth  in  his 
"Christian  Ethics."  He  divides  duties  into  two  main  classes: 
(i)  Duties  to  oneself,  and  (2)  Duties  to  others.  Under  the  first 
he  discusses  (i)  Care  for  bodily  health,  (2)  Self  defence,  (3) 
Temperance  and  exercise,  (4)  Freedom  from  fear  of  death.  Under 
the  second  head,  he  discusses   (i)   Justice,  showing  that  it  is  not 


THE    FUNCTION    OF    CHRISTIAN    ETHICS.  37 

inconsistent  with  love — it  is  the  giving  to  man  his  dues;  (2)  Speak- 
ing the  truth,  honorableness,  valor.  (Cf.  Newman  Smyth,  Chris- 
tian Ethics,  Book  II,  Chap.  2,  3.)  Now  the  criticism  to  be  made 
here  is  that  this  setting  forth  of  Christian  duties  is  not  an  organic 
one.  He  has  taken  the  ordinary  Platonic  duties  and  shown  that  the 
Christian  duty  of  love  does  not  contradict  them.  Is  Christian 
ethics  so  poor  that  it  cannot  have  its  own  system  of  duties?  A 
Christian  ethics,  which  is  self  respecting,  ought  not  to  go  to  philo- 
sophical ethics  for  its  list  of  virtues,  rather  will  it  derive  its  virtues 
from  the  nature  of  the  Christian  vocation.  The  Christian  has  been 
called  to  a  life  of  love  towards  God  and  man  and  this  concept  is 
broad  enough  to  include  all  the  attitudes  and  phases  of  the  moral 
life.  (Cf.  Dewey's  Syllabus  of  Ethics,  p.  143.  Cf.  I  Cor.,  13 
Chap.) 

The  necessity  of  giving  our  system  of  duties  an  organic  rela- 
tionship to  the  Christian  faith  seems  to  be  imperative  at  the  present 
time.  There  is  a  tremendous  loss  of  energy  when  these  two  do  not 
meet.  Our  time  seems  to  be  suffering  from  the  rather  strange 
dilemma  of  having  accepted  to  a  large  extent  a  Christian  faith  and 
to  some  extent  a  Grecian  or  philosophical  system  of  ethics.  The 
result  has  been  a  loss  of  power  in  ethics  and  a  loss  of  purpose  in 
religion.  There  was  no  such  dualism  in  Jesus'  teachings  and 
there  is  no  necessity  for  such  a  dualism  in  our  teaching.  The 
category  of  **Son-ship  to  God"  is  rich  enough  to  include  all  the 
content  which  any  philosophical  ethics  has  claimed  for  its  ideal. 

Having  valued  the  personal  virtues  with  reference  to  man's 
vocation  Christian  ethics  must  advance  to  value  conduct,  as  it  ex- 
presses itself  in  customs  and  institutions.  It  is  clear  that  we  come 
here  to  a  place  where  some  careful  discrimination  is  necessary. 
There  are  certain  judgments,  about  customs  and  institutions,  which 
Christian  ethics  cannot  render;  these  must  be  left  for  science. 
There  are  certain  other  judgments  which  it  can  render,  and  to 
distinguish  betw^een  these  two  is  often  a  difficult  task. 

Man  is  born  into  a  world  of  institutions.  He  does  not,  at  least 
in  our  age,  enter  life  at  its  beginning.  Society  has  been  moving 
onward  for  hundreds  of  years,  and  by  a  process  of  experimentation 
men  have  found  that  certain  things  are  worth  doing.  Around  cer- 
tain of  the  great  ''worths"  of  society  have  grown  institutions  which 
claim  a  certain  sanctity  in  themselves.  They  develop  ethical  codes 
of  their  own.  Such  are  all  the  great  professions  w4th  their  profes- 
sional ethics.  There  is  a  legal  ethics,  and  an  ethics  peculiar  to  the 
medical  profession ;  there  are  codes  peculiar  to  certain  social  con- 
ditions:  the  Court  of  St.  James  has  one  code,  the  Four  Hundred 
have  another,  the  Ghetto  yet  another.  There  are  certain  codes  of 
ethics  which  are  peculiar  to  the  business  world,  all  built  around 


3^  THE    FUNCTION    OF    CHRISTIAN    ETHICS. 

the  great  values  which  they  seek  to  conserve.  Now  the  man  born 
into  the  world  of  multitudinous  values  will  first  feel  the  inclination 
to  keep  them  all;  they  are  all  of  equal  value  for  him  and  he  has 
no  basis  for  distinction.  But  such  a  condition  of  mind  can  only 
result  in  injury  to  the  man.  On  the  other  hand,  if  he  recklessly 
rejects  all  these  values,  he  finds  himself  crippled  in  the  struggle 
for  existence.  What  he  needs  is  that  these  values  be  unified  on  the 
basis  of  some  fundamental  value.  This  valuation  must  not  be  one 
which  gives  an  external  classification  of  values  but  one  which 
systematizes  them  with  reference  to  a  fundamental  concept  or  pur- 
pose. Christian  ethics  has  for  its  function  the  valuation  of  every 
custom,  profession  or  institution  with  reference  to  man's  vocation. 
It  must  never  make  the  mistake  of  declaring  these  customs  and 
institutions  to  be  of  no  value;  this  is  the  fault  of  anarchism.  It 
must  not  declare  them  sacred  and  valuable  in  themselves;  this 
would  result  in  legalism.  But  it  must  so  value  these  customs  and 
institutions  as  to  give  each  its  relative  place.  Man  is  freed  from 
them,  not  by  taking  him  out  of  them,  but  by  giving  him  a  principle 
of  criticism  of  them.  He  remains  in  the  world  but  not  of  it.  The 
Sabbath  is  not  destroyed  but  it  is  to  be  used  by  man.  Christian 
ethics  should  save  a  man  from  the  slavery  of  institutionalism  in 
every  form,  because  it  must  insist  that  every  institution  was  made 
for  man  and  not  man  for  the  institution.  Its  business  is  to  keep 
the  institutional  side  of  life  in  solution.  In  a  word  Christian  ethics 
will  prevent  a  man  from  holding  any  institution  as  supremely  valu- 
able, that  is  as  divine.  Divinity  cannot  be  lodged  outside  of  God 
and  man. 

Christian  ethics  ought  to  save  a  man  from  the  sin  of  profes- 
sionalism. The  essence  of  professionalism  is  the  setting  up  of 
one's  profession  as  an  end  in  itself.  A  physician  drops  into  pro- 
fessionalism when  he  looks  upon  his  professional  values  as  supreme 
and  fails  to  relate  them  to  the  larger  values  of  life.  The  lawyer 
deteriorates  to  professionalism  when  his  legal  code  of  ethics  be- 
comes the  sole  guide  of  life.  It  should  be  the  function  of  Christian 
ethics  so  to  relate  these  secondary  values  that  there  will  be  unity 
in  them  all,  and  thus  afford  a  basis  for  control  in  each.  There 
is  a  great  need  at  the  present  time  for  a  system  of  ethics  which 
can  bring  unity  into  the  secondary  values  of  life,  men  are  pulling 
in  opposite  directions,  there  is  a  lack  of  co-ordination  among  the 
professions,  especially  a  lack  of  harmony  between  the  secular  pro- 
fessions and  the  church.  It  should  be  the  function  of  Christian 
ethics  so  to  unify  life  that  no  profession  may  look  upon  itself  as 
an  end  in  itself,  but  as  a  part  of  a  larger  whole  to  which  it  must 
look  for  its  ultimate  sanction. 


THE    FUNCTION    OF    CHRISTIAN    ETHICS.  39 

RELATION    OF    CHRISTIAN    ETHICS    TO    HISTORY. 

The  charge  will  doubtless  be  made  that  the  system  of  ethics 
here  set  forth  lands  one  in  anarchistic  subjectivism,  which  will 
totally  disregard  the  historical  values  of  the  race.  It  is  necessary 
to  say  a  few  words  as  to  the  relation  of  the  ethical  man  to  history. 
In  the  first  place,  it  is  to  be  pointed  out  that  the  Christian  who  is 
working  at  his  moral  problem,  can  never  get  away  from  the  fact 
that  the  call  to  this  problem  comes  to  him  out  of  history.  There 
is  little  in  nature  to  lay  upon  him  this  demand,  and  still  nothing 
in  his  immediate  circumstances  which  makes  him  certain  of  the 
necessity  and  possibility  of  such  a  life.  It  is  out  of  history  that 
the  call  comes,  out  of  history  comes  the  guarantee  of  its  possi- 
bility. And  yet  it  is  not  history  as  such  to  which  man  owes  obedi- 
ence. Out  of  history  has  come  a  call  which  lays  it  upon  man 
to  transcend  history.  He  is  called  to  personal  life,  and  yet  to  be 
a  person,  means  to  be  superior  to  history  as  such.  Or  to  state  the 
matter  in  a  different  way,  the  Christian  although  he  gets  his  call 
through  the  events  of  history,  always  goes  back  of  history,  as 
mere  events,  to  the  personal  will  which  transcends  it,  as  personality 
always  transcends  things.  Men  have  been  working  at  the  Chris- 
tian vocation  for  centuries,  and  it  is  through  their  continuous  labor 
that  the  modern  Christian  enters  into  his  vocation,  and  yet  by  the 
very  nature  of  his  vocation,  he  is  under  obligation  not  to  subject 
himself  to  those  who  are  the  medium  of  his  call. 

In  the  second  place,  it  is  to  be  pointed  out  that  the  moral 
struggles  of  the  men  in  the  past  have  a  positive  value  for  him. 
Although  he  may  not  copy  the  moral  struggle  of  his  father,  yet  the 
fact  that  his  father  has  struggled  should  be  of  value  to  him. 
Through  the  pain  and  strife  of  centuries  men  have  found  that 
certain  things  were  worth  doing;  there  are  great  values  which 
they  have  sought  to  conserve.  They  have  incorporated  these  values 
in  codes  of  law.  The  great  "Thou  shalts"  and  'Thou  shalt  nots," 
of  the  race  all  have  stood  for  the  fact  that  certain  things  are  uni- 
versally worth  the  doing  or  the  not  doing.  It  must  be  that  man 
can  make  use  of  this  moral  capital,  thus  stored  up  at  such  a  cost, 
without  for  himself  repeating  the  struggle.  All  this  depends,  how- 
ever, on  the  man  himself.  The  fact  that  men  have  left  this  deposit 
from  their  experience  is  not  in  itself  a  help  to  him.  Their  pre- 
cepts must  have  a  meaning  for  him,  else  they  are  of  no  value.  He 
is  met  with  a  thousand  precepts  of  every  description  which  he  tries 
to  keep  as  precepts,  if  they  are  all  of  equal  value,  if  he  feels  under 
obligation  to  keep  the  whole  law,  then  the  only  result  of  the  ethical 
experience  of  the  past  will  be  to  land  him  in  slavish  legalism.  It 
will  be  a  rock  on  which  inner  life  will  dash  itself  in  pieces.    As  an 


^O  THE    FUNCTION    OF    CHRISTIAN    ETHICS. 

ultimate  result  he  will  probably  discard  all  ethical  values,  and  set  up 
some  independent  ones  of  his  own,  which  means  that  society  will 
cast  him  out  as  dangerous  to  its  welfare.  It  is  such  a  relation  to 
history  which  actually  does  end  in  ultimate  anarchy.*    History  is  not 

♦The  French  Revolution  is  interesting  from  this  point  of  view, 
necessarily  a  blessing  to  a  man,  to  subject  one's  self  to  it  is  slavery, 
to  reject  it  is  poverty  and  weakness. 

History  has  value  for  the  man  who  has  first  heard  the  call  to 
personal  Ufe.  If,  as  has  been  said,  this  call  comes  to  man  out  of 
history,  it  must  be  the  first  which  he  hears.  This  call  to  personal 
life,  unlocks  for  man  the  treasures  of  the  ethical  experience  of 
the  race.  By  first  raising  him  above  this  experience  he  is  placed 
in  a  position  where  he  may  use  it.  It  is  Jesus,  not  the  Pharisees, 
who  makes  good  use  of  the  Old  Testament  law,  for  him  it  is  filled 
full  of  meaning.  For  the  man,  who  first  holds  in  his  hand  an 
ethical  criterion,  all  of  history  becomes  a  source  of  ethical  gain. 
It  seems  necessary  to  emphasize  this  relation  of  the  ethical  man  to 
history,  for  to  say  that  a  man  can  be  ethical  apart  from  history  is 
absolute  nonsense.  No  man  can  construct  anew  the  great  ethical 
values  of  the  race,  any  more  than  a  man  can  construct  anew  the 
great  religious  values  of  the  race.  A  speculative  ethics  will  last 
about  as  long  as  a  speculative  religion.  In  these  two  spheres  it  is 
experience  which  counts.  No  philosophical  speculator  will  ever  set 
aside  that  which,  through  years  of  experience,  the  world  has  tested 
and  proved  good.  But  in  going  back  to  history  it  is  always  neces- 
sary to  keep  in  mind  that  the  Christian  goes  to  the  personal  will 
of  which  he  conceives  history  to  be  the  expression — a  will  which 
calls  upon  him  to  be  a  person  also,  and  which  forbids  him  to  sub- 
ject himself  to  any  human  thing  or  force.  By  going  back  to 
history  in  the  attitude  of  a  personal  being  with  a  clear  conception 
of  his  own  vocation  all  the  ethical  struggles  of  the  race  become 
significant  for  him.  He  alone  can  gather  in  the  rich  fields  of  the 
past  because  he  alone  has  the  power  to  appreciate.  Instead  of 
rejecting  history,  the  man  who  has  heard  the  call  to  personal  life, 
is  the  only  one  who  really  appropriates  it. 

The  rejection  of  a  legalistic  acceptance  of  scripture  teaching 
does  not  mean  that  a  man  rejects  the  ethical  teachings  of  scripture 
as  of  no  value.  This  is  something  which  Lobstein  has  shown  in 
the  realm  of  dogmatic  theology.  The  question  in  systematic  the- 
ology concerns  the  relation  between  the  doctrines  of  systematic 
theology  and  scripture  doctrines.  Is  systematic  theology  to  take 
over  uncritically  the  doctrines  of  scripture  ?  This  must  be  answered 
in  the  negative,  since,  if  answered  in  the  affirmative,  it  would  result 
in  a  legalism  in  thought  life.  It  would  be  intolerable  to  say  that 
my  world  view  must  be  the  same  as  that  of  St.  Paul.    He  believed 


THE    FUNCTION    OF    CHRISTIAN     ETHICS;  4I 

in  a  cataclysmic  'Svind-up"  of  the  universe  in  a  very  short  time. 
Must  a  man,  to  be  a  Christian,  also  hold  this  ?  On  the  other  hand, 
if  he  does  not  ag^ree  to  accept  those  doctrines  in  their  entirety, 
is  he  to  reject  them  all  as  valueless,  or  shall  he  accept  a  few  great 
ones  and  reject  the  more  minute  ones — admitting  a  sphere  of  the 
indifferent  here  as  in  ethics?  (Cf.  Lobstein,  page  123,  "Introduc- 
tion to  Protestant  Dogmatics.")  Lobstein  says:  "The  Bible  is 
the  witness  which  causes  us  to  comprehend  the  Gospel."  The 
Gospel — that  is  to  say,  the  good  news  of  the  coming  of  the  King- 
dom of  God  on  the  earth,  the  revelation  of  the  divine  holiness  and 
love  in  their  perfect  harmony  manifested  in  the  light  and  in  the 
entire  activity  of  that  One  from  whom  our  religion  derives  its 
name,  Jesus  Christ* — the  Gospel  is  the  essential  content  and  inspir- 
*Quoted  by  Lobstem  from  L.  Monod,  Le  Problemede  1'  autorite,  pp.  70, 
loi,  108. 

ing  soul  of  the  Holy  Scripture.  The  value  of  the  latter  consists  in 
that  it  is  the  document  of  the  history  of  a  divine  work  which, 
continuing  through  the  centuries,  has  brought  to  humanity,  accord- 
ing to  a  providential  plan,  especially  revealed  in  Israel,  the  organs 
of  a  new  life,  whose  perfect  development  and  supreme  manifesta- 
tion are  found  to  be  realized  in  Jesus  Christ.  This  permanent 
and  integral  source  of  the  Gospel  furnishes  to  us  a  principle  of 
spiritual  criticism,  a  positive  religious  criterion,  according  to  which 
we  can  value  the  books  of  the  Holy  Scripture  and  discriminate  in 
each  writing  between  the  fundamental  and  essential  parts  and  the 
decrepit  and  transitory  parts.  The  proclamation  of  the  Word  of 
God,  the  proclamation  of  the  Gospel  of  redemption,  as  a  sovereign 
authority,  puts  into  our  hands  a  regulating  principle;  we  have 
found  the  focus  about  which  all  the  parts  group  themselves  with 
a  value  proportionate  to  the  approach  of  each  part  to  this  divine 
center."  What  Lobstein  has  said  here  concerning  the  value  of  the 
biblical  doctrines  for  faith  seems  to  me  equally  true  in  the  realm 
of  Christian  practice.  The  Bible  is  the  means  by  which  there  is 
revealed  to  man  a  new  divine  life.  This  life  is  authoritative,  its 
life  has  expressed  itself  in  faith  and  practice.  On  the  side  of  prac- 
tice, it  is  the  working  out  by  Jesus  and  his  early  followers  of 
their  divine  earthly  vocation.  Their  words  and  their  deeds  show 
us  this  vocation  in  its  various  phases,  and  we  gain  thereby  a  rich 
knowledge  of  it.  As  we  appreciate  the  vocation,  their  deeds  take 
on  a  unity,  they  are  no  longer  a  conglomerate  mass,  but  the  dif- 
ferent phases  of  an  organic  life.  We  can  value  their  actions  by  the 
inner  principles  of  that  life.  In  our  attitude  towards  them,  it  is  not 
for  us  to  copy  their  actions,  but  to  appropriate  their  vocation,  work- 
ing out  an  organic  life  of  our  own.  We  are  thus  dependent  on  thern, 
since  it  is  from  them  we  get  our  vocation,  and  yet  our  vocation  is 


42  THE    FUNCTION    OF    CHRISTIAN    ETHICS. 

at  the  same  time  an  independent  one.  It  is  to  the  Bible  that  the 
Qiristian  ethicist  goes  for  the  clearest,  most  normal  expression  of 
the  Christian  vocation.  In  this  he  finds  the  objective  statement 
of  the  vocation  which  he,  as  a  Christian,  has  appropriated. 

By  thus  gaining  a  clear  conception  of  the  criterion  for  action, 
given  by  Jesus,  we  save  even  the  Old  Testament  as  a  source  of 
Christian  ethical  knowledge.  The  man  who  insists  strenuously 
upon  the  validity  of  the  Ten  Commandments  saves  only  the  Ten 
Commandments.  When  once  a  criterion  of  son-ship  to  God  as  a 
criterion  for  ethical  action  has  been  accepted,  one  approaches  the 
Old  Testament,  not  primarily  to  find  out  what  has  been  com- 
manded, but  to  learn  how  men  in  the  past  have  worked  at  their 
vocation.  Their  experience  is  valuable,  be  it  either  a  success  or 
a  failure.  Throughout  the  Old  Testament  he  finds  the  experience 
of  men  who  are  working  at  the  problem  of  life.  From  all  of  them 
he  gains  insight  into  what  it  means  to  be  a  child  of  God.  He 
thus  gains  a  clearer  conception  of  his  vocation  and  is  by  so  much 
a  freer  man. 


CHAPTER    IV. 

PRACTICAL      VALUE    OF      SUCH    A    SYSTEM    OF    ETHICS — CHRISTIAN 
ETHICS    AND    SCIENCE. 

In  discussing  the  practical  value  of  Christian  ethics,  we  shall 
first  consider  the  value  of  Christian  ethics  for  the  physical  and 
social  sciences.  In  order  to  do  this  it  will  be  necessary  to  give  a 
somewhat  extended  discussion  of  the  function  of  these  sciences. 
It  was  intimated  in  a  previous  section  that  there  were  certain 
judgments  about  an  ethical  act  which  the  ethical  teacher  could  not 
render.  As  to  the  end  and  purpose  of  every  act  he  is  an  authority. 
But  that  is  not  the  only  question  which  may  be  asked.  Suppose 
the  good  Samaritan,  whom  the  great  Ethical  Teacher,  commended 
as  good  because  of  his  good  will  which  knew  no  limitations,  had 
poured  a  salt  solution  into  the  man's  wounds  instead  of  oil,  who 
would  have  passed  a  judgment  on  this  act?  Eventually  I  suppose 
the  ethical  teacher  would,  he  would  say  that  no  person  with  a 
desire  to  help  his  neighbor  would  pour  a  salt  solution  into  a  gaping 
wound.  But  this  would  be  only  after  he  had  found  what  was 
the  proper  remedy  to  apply  to  this  wound.  There  would  be  a  time 
when  the  question  of  the  proper  remedy  would  be  a  real  question. 
The  fact  that  a  man  has  a  good  will  is  no  immediate  guarantee 
that  he  will  use  the  right  means  to  express  this  will.  A  good 
heart  will  eventually  find  the  right  way,  but  the  process  is  a  long 
one  and  in  the  meantime  the  man  needs  help.  To  be  ethically 
good,  knowledge  is  necessary  to  a  man  as  well  as  a  good  will.  It 
is  not  sufficient  merely  to  love  one's  neighbor  as  one's  self,  to  do 
unto  him  as  one  would  be  done  unto.  The  question  comes,  what 
would  one  wish  that  a  neighbor  should  do  unto  him.  It  is  not  a 
question  of  how,  but  of  zdtat.  This  is  not  something  outside  of  the 
Golden  Rule,  it  is  simply  the  application  of  the  Golden  Rule  to 
a  special  case.  The  Golden  Rule  covers  the  whole  situation,  science 
is  not  something  outside  of  ethics,  ethics  includes  science,  it  is  not 
complete  without  science.  Man  in  his  vocation  must  use  means, 
science  has  to  do  with  the  means  which  a  man  uses  in  carrying  out 
his  vocation.     Let  us  make  this  plain  by  returning  to  the  illustra- 

43 


44  THE    FUNCTION    OF    CHRISTIAN    ETHICS. 

tion  of  house  building.  Suppose  I  am  to  construct  a  house,  and 
have  a  very  clear  idea  of  the  purpose  of  the  house  but  a  very  poor 
idea  of  the  materials  to  be  used  in  its  construction.  If  I  do  not 
know  the  power  of  resistance  of  the  different  materials  and  the 
adhesive  power  of  mortar,  my  execution  of  my  purpose  is  bound 
to  be  very  inadequate.  Suppose  I  want  to  tear  down  one  house 
and  reconstruct  it,  if  I  do  not  understand  the  mechanism  of  the 
house  I  shall  have  hard  work  in  tearing  it  down,  and  when  I  recon- 
struct it  I  shall  be  liable  to  make  simply  a  copy  of  the  old.  But 
if  I  understand  the  materials  as  well  as  the  purpose  of  houses,  I 
ought  to  be  able  to  produce  the  ideal  product,  that  is,  the  product 
thoroughly  in  accord  with  my  purpose.  With  this  illustration  in 
mind,  let  us  turn  to  some  of  the  social  institutions  upon  which  it 
is  the  business  of  science  to  render  a  verdict.  Take  for  instance 
the  liquor  traffic.  Is  it  best  for  a  city  to  have  free  saloons,  high 
license  or  prohibition?  This  is  a  question  on  which  there  has  been 
expended  an  endless  amount  of  good  will,  but  it  has  often  hap- 
pened that  those  exercising  the  good  will  have  been  somewhat 
intolerant  of  any  question  as  to  the  proper  means.  As  a  result, 
much  good  will  has  been  dissipated.  There  has  been  need  that 
someone  should  do  as  the  "Committee  of  Fifty"  has  done,  i.  e., 
make  a  scientific  study  of  the  means  to  be  used.  They  have  done 
this  by  gathering  their  facts  together,  by  systematizing  facts,  and 
by  placing  in  the  hands  of  the  reformer  a  knowledge  of  the  means 
to  be  used  in  the  accomplishment  of  his  purpose.  Science  does 
not  dictate  means,  it  simply  analyzes  means,  and  systematizes  them, 
and  then  places  in  the  hands  of  the  reformer  the  necessary  facts. 
It  may  be  worth  while  to  note  that  science  did  not  do  this  until 
long  after  the  man  of  good  will  had  created  a  demand  for  it,  but 
the  man  of  good  will  could  not  get  along  without  the  knowledge  of 
the  means  to  be  used.  It  is  the  purpose  of  science  to  keep  the 
means  side  of  life  in  solution,  to  keep  man  from  using  wrong 
means  to  a  good  end.  In  times  of  reconstruction,  and  for  the 
man  who  is  following  the  Giristian  vocation,  all  times  are  times  of 
reconstruction,  ethics  has  for  its  function  to  keep  clear  before  a 
man  his  fundamental  purpose,  and  science  places  in  his  hands  the 
principles  of  control  of  the  materials  to  be  used.  When  both  have 
done  their  perfect  work  there  should  be  reconstruction  without 
devastation,  progress  without  retrogression. 

The  conception  of  Christian  ethics  here  set  forth  should  be  wel- 
comed by  the  man  of  science.  It  is  often  emphasized  that  ethics 
has  everything  to  gain  from  science.  It  can  be  shown,  I  think, 
that  science  has  as  much  to  gain  from  ethics.  If  ethics  does  its 
work  well  a  man  should  be  saved  from  institutionalism.  Science 
gains  here  in  two  ways.     In  the  first  place  man  is  in  a  better  atti- 


THE    FUNCTION    OF    CHRISTIAN    ETHICS.  45 

tude  to  criticize  and  remodel  an  institution  when  he  stands  above  it. 
So  long  as  a  man  identifies  his  eternal  welfare  with  an  institution, 
he  will  be  very  slow  to  allow  anyone  to  criticize  it,  which  of  course 
hinders  the  scientist  in  his  work.  When  any  class  of  people  identify 
their  welfare  with  a  certain  social  order  the  scientist  may  criti- 
cize in  vain.  On  the  other  hand,  if  worth  is  lodged  not  in  an 
institution  but  in  personal  life,  man  ceases  to  look  upon  the  insti- 
tution as  permanent  and  will  seek  to  make  of  it  a  means  for  the 
expression  of  the  personal  life.  This  will  increase  the  demand 
for  a  carefully  performed  scientific  task  with  reference  to  this 
institution.  The  question  will  be  asked :  "Is  this  institution  the 
proper  means  for  accomplishing  the  purpose  for  which  it  was  in- 
tended?" This  of  course  demands  a  scientific  answer.  Lecky 
tells  us  that  it  was  the  increased  emphasis  on  the  worth  of  the 
individual  life  which  enabled  Christianity  to  renovate  the  institu- 
tions of  the  ancient  Roman  world. 

It  may  be  shown,  1  think,  that  the  conception  of  ethics  here  set 
forth  is  the  only  one  which  allows  full  play  to  the  scientist  in  his 
work.  All  systems  of  casuistry  can  not  help  doing  violence  to 
the  scientific  side  of  life  since  they  assume  that  this  side  is  static. 
To  give  a  man  a  precept  is  to  state  for  him  his  act  in  terms  of  the 
means  to  be  used.  It  is  to  state  not  only  the  attitude  of  his  heart 
toward  a  man  but  the  means  to  be  used  in  carrying  out  this  atti- 
tude, hence  no  room  is  left  for  a  proper  consideration  of  the  means 
to  be  used. 

VALUE    FOR     MORAL    LIFE. 

Such  an  ethics  as  is  here  described  will  strike  at  the  very  root 
of  sin.  Men  sin,  not  through  lack  of  knowledge  of  the  right 
thing  to  do,  but  through  lack  of  what  St.  Paul  calls  "faith," 
through  failure  to  take  life  personally.  They  try  to  limit  the 
sphere  in  which  they  must  act  as  personal  beings.  Jane  Addams' 
book  on  "Democracy  and  Social  Ethics"  sets  this  forth  in  a  very 
lucid  way.  Tolstoi  has  shown  in  his  works  the  tendency  of  men 
to  institutionalize  life,  to  think  that  there  are  limits  to  the  sphere 
in  which  they  must  act  in  accord  with  the  principle  of  love.  Jesus' 
efforts  were  to  get  men  to  take  life  personally,  to  avoid  allowing 
external  things  to  dominate  over  them.  It  is  at  this  point  that  such 
an  ethics  will  attack  the  moral  problem,  it  will  not  seek  to  tell  men 
what  to  do  but  it  will  so  analyze  personal  life  that  a  man  will  see 
that  there  is  no  place  where  he  can  cease  being  a  person  and  be- 
come a  thing,  that  there  are  no  external  fortunes  or  misfortunes 
which  can  relieve  him  of  the  necessity  of  taking  life  personally. 

Such  an  ethics  will  insure  several  characteristics  to  an  ethical 
act.    It  will  insure  that  an  ethical  act  shall  be  organically  related  to 


46  THE    FUNCTION    OF    CHRISTIAN    ETHICS. 

the  ethical  personality,  a  characteristic  which  neither  Catholic  ethics 
nor  orthodox  Protestant  ethics  can  secure.  According  to  the  theory 
here  set  forth  there  is  no  goodness  outside  of  personality.  No 
act  is  good  in  itself,  but  it  is  good  because  it  is  the  work  of  a 
good  person.  The  act  which  is  done  for  any  external  reason  grows 
out  of  a  sinful  motive.  Our  theory  of  ethics  in  no  way  seeks  to 
prescribe  what  definite  things  are  to  be  done.  It  would  thereby 
encourage  men  to  sin.  It  rather  seeks  to  throw  man  back  upon 
himself,  to  insist  that  the  act  must  be  his  own,  to  teach  him  to 
listen  to  the  voice  of  God  within  himself.  By  causing  man  to 
take  life  personally  it  furthers  his  life  in  the  realization  of  per- 
sonality. 

Again  such  an  ethics  will  secure  the  possibility  of  progress  in 
ethical  action.  According  to  the  Catholic  conception,  progress  musi 
come  through  increased  legislation,  for  new  situations  new  precepts 
must  be  formulated.  According  to  the  orthodox  Protestant  con- 
ception it  is  hard  to  see  how  there  can  be  any  progress.  Accord- 
ing to  our  conception  it  is  the  personality  which  progresses.  Man's 
vocation  does  not  change  nor  does  the  exposition  of  it  change, 
but  the  man  himself  changes.  He  can  adapt  himself  to  a  new 
situation  but  he  never  reaches  the  place  where  his  vocation  as  a 
child  of  God  is  changed. 

VALUE    FOR    RELIGION. 

It  can  be  claimed,  I  think,  that  this  is  the  only  conception  of 
ethics  which  works  in  the  interest  of  a  man  who  has  experienced 
a  new  spiritual  birth.  Catholic  ethics  is  not  primarily  interested 
in  the  conduct  of  the  Christian  life.  It  is  interested  in  the  Catholic 
Church  as  an  institution  and  will  make  plain  to  a  man  what  things 
the  institution  will  demand  of  him,  but  it  is  not  primarily  inter- 
ested in  the  way  these  "things  to  be  done"  relate  themselves  to  the 
life  of  the  Christian.  The  Protestant  ethics  which  makes  a  book 
organic  for  the  content  of  ethical  action,  is  not  primarily  inter- 
ested in  the  relation  of  conduct  to  the  new  life.  So  that  the  man 
who  has  been  set  free  in  his  faith  life  is  shoved  back  into  Juda- 
istic  legalism  on  the  conduct  side :  there  is  no  organic  relation 
between  such  conduct  and  the  new  life  to  which  man  has  been 
called.  But  the  conception  here  set  forth  makes  faith  and  conduct 
an  organic  whole. 

It  is  often  said,  that  a  man  is  not  saved  by  ethics.  This  is 
perfectly  true.  Neither  is  a  man  saved  by  theology.  The  Holy 
Spirit,  the  spirit  of  God,  working  in  a  man  is  the  source  of  all 
saving  power.  But  theology  aids  in  the  saving  of  men  by  making 
clear  to  them  the  nature  of  their  faith.  May  it  not  be  said  that 
ethics  aids  in  the  saving  of  men  by  making  clear  to  them  the  nature 


THE    FUNCTION    OF    CHRISTIAN    ETHICS.  47 

of  their  Christian  conduct?  Salvation  is  a  matter  of  being  a  son 
of  Gk)d,  being  a  son  of  God  implies  a  faith  life  and  a  conduct  life, 
inasmuch  as  Christian  ethics  aids  a  man  in  his  conduct  life  it  can 
be  said  to  aid  in  saving  him.  A  man  is  certainly  not  saved  until 
he  is  saved  in  his  conduct  life.  Faith  and  conduct  are  too  inti- 
mately related  to  permit  a  man  to  be  free  in  one  and  enslaved  in 
the  other.  To  be  truly  free  he  must  be  free  in  both  faith  and 
conduct. 

CHRISTIAN    ETHICS    AS    A    SCIENTIFIC    TASK. 

This  conception  of  Christian  ethics  gives  to  the  ethical  teachef 
a  scientific  task.  By  scientific  task  I  mean  a  task  to  which  there 
are  definite  limits  and  which  co-ordinates  with  other  interests  of 
society.  If  science  is  a  definite  body  of  knowledge  reduced  to 
laws  and  embodied  in  a  system,  then  the  Christian  ethical  teacher 
has  a  scientific  task,  for  he  has  a  definite  body  of  knowledge  which 
may  be  reduced  to  law  and  embodied  in  a  system.  It  is  the 
knowledge  that  has  accumulated  about  the  conduct  side  of  the 
Christian  faith.  The  scientist  in  this  field  of  knowledge  has  a 
definite  field  of  labor.  He  in  no  way  conflicts  with  the  scientific 
servant  working  in  other  fields  of  knowledge.  Such  an  ethical 
teacher  has  perhaps  a  more  limited  task  than  an  ethical  teacher 
who  seeks  to  legislate  on  all  the  issues  before  the  public,  but  just 
because  it  is  more  limited,  it  is  more  definite  and  ultimately  more 
necessary.  The  Christian  ethicist  must  take  his  stand  among  those 
whom  society  conserves  because  it  has  need  of  such.  He  will  be 
valuable  so  long  as  his  work  is  necessary. 

It  can  not  be  denied  that  such  a  conception  of  the  function  of 
Christian  ethics  means  a  quantitative  reduction  of  the  sphere  of  teach- 
ing which  belongs  to  the  Christian  minister  and  the  Christian 
church.  The  church  gives  up  its  claim  to  train  men  in  the  tech- 
nique of  ethical  action.  The  Christian  minister  will  not  consider 
it  his  function  to  tell  the  banker  how  to  conduct  his  business,  the 
lawyer  must  be  allowed  to  win  his  own  case,  the  physician  must 
regulate  the  affairs  of  his  profession.  When  the  church  has 
granted  all  this,  will  it  have  committed  suicide?  When  to  every 
man  has  been  granted  the  right  and  necessity  of  deciding  what  is 
right  will  there  be  any  need  of  a  church?  Many  people  will 
answer  in  the  negative.  Certainly  if  the  great  need  of  society  is 
technical  instruction  the  university  ought  long  ago  to  have  sup- 
planted the  cathedral.  If  man's  acts  are  imperfect  because  he  lacks 
knowledge  society  ought  long  ago  to  have  substituted  the  public 
school  for  the  meeting  house.  It  is  the  function  of  supplying 
technical  instruction  which  has  been  eliminated  from  the  church's 
duties,  and  if  this  is  the  kind  of  truth  which  sets  men  free  then 


^8  THE    FUNCTION    OF    CHRISTIAN    ETHICS. 

there  is  no  longer  a  demand  for  the  church.  It  is  hard  to  see  how 
the  institution  got  such  a  start.  Socrates  was  right  before  Jesus 
and  the  change  in  the  course  of  events  which  Jesus  introduced  has 
been  a  miserable  aberration. 

tJut  all  such  fears  for  the  future  of  the  church  are  based  on  a 
misapprehension  of  the  function  of  the  church.  The  people  who 
hold  them  look  upon  the  church  as  a  sort  of  Bureau  of  Informa- 
tion— a  social  sign  board  to  direct  people  through  the  wilderness. 
Since  men  have  found  that  one  of  the  joys  of  life  is  to  blaze  new 
paths  through  the  wilderness  they  have  decided  to  burn  the  sign 
boards,  or  at  least  to  leave  them  to  the  weaklings  in  the  rear  of 
the  procession.  Now  the  whole  information  bureau  idea  is  per- 
nicious. It  represents  a  dull,  dreary,  priggish,  pedantic,  view  of 
life  which  may  satisfy  some  men  with  scholastic  tendencies,  but 
which  does  not  answer  to  the  demands  of  real  life.  The 
crying  need  of  man  is  not  for  knowledge,  but  for  fellow- 
ship. Witness  the  fraternal  organizations  and  witness  the  church 
when  it  is  not  controlled  by  scholastic  ideals.  Man  doesn't  object 
to  being  in  a  wilderness  if  he  has  company.  Give  him  fellowship 
and  he  will  conquer  the  wilderness.  His  primary  need  is  not 
knowledge  but  inspiration.  This  he  draws  from  association  with 
personalities  both  human  and  divine.  The  feeling  that  life  is 
worth  living,  not  the  knowledge  of  how  it  is  to  be  lived,  is  the 
thing  of  primary  importance.  The  church  will  exist  just  so  long 
as  it  is  worth  while  for  a  man  to  meet  in  fellowship  with  other  men 
who  are  fighting  the  same  battle,  and  with  Jesus  Christ,  who  is 
captain  of  the  host.  If  anyone  doubts  the  need  of  such  an  organ- 
ization let  him  look  at  the  number  of  societies  and  organizations 
whose  function  is  not  the  dispensing  of  knowledge  but  the  realiza- 
tion of  brotherhood.  Ethical  principles  are  the  conditions  under 
which  a  man  may  enter  into  the  kingdom  of  personalities,  the 
human  brotherhood  in  which  Jesus  is  the  elder  brother. 


\braT 

or  THE 


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